Greetings from the Norfolk Hooters (again)

Happily, Jan is back on board in Norfolk.  The boat and I are both glad to see her.  We spent today looking at old wooden schooners in Portsmouth, that raced here from Baltimore..  Beautiful, but unbelievable maintenance money pits.  If man was meant to build boats out of wood, then why did God invent fiberglass?  Or was that DuPont?  Whatever...........

The ride down here from Solomons was  quite exhilarating.  The Wild Thing and Ocean Star (Beneteau 50) left Solomons Friday morning bound for Deltaville 55 miles to the South.  Wind was forecast to be West at 20+ increasing to 25 with gusts to 30 in the afternoon.  Sensible sailors stayed in the harbour.  We have never been classified as sensible.

We spent most of the day close reaching at 8 to 9 knots  with a full 140 jib and reefed main in 20 knots of wind.  A fun ride, although all of Jan's throw pillows  were launched onto the floor by a couple of big waves.

Wild Thing and Ocean Star are even on speed, and about 1.5 knots faster than other cruising boats in our size.  We easily passed a sleek looking 45' (Taswell or Tasman?) and then passed a Grand Banks 42' trawler that was wallowing along in the growing waves.  We could not pass a 40' cat, but had no trouble keeping up with them.  So much for the theory that cats are really fast.

At 3:00 PM, I decided that the weather prognosticators were exaggerating on wind speeds.  That is when the first blast hit.  I was already reefing the jib so that I could turn the corner and harden up for the last 3 miles into Deltaville.  A glance to the wind speed indicator showed 36 knots over the deck.  So I rolled up the jib and motored with reefed main into the 30+ knots of wind into the heavy chop.  The boat did surprisingly well straight into this crap at 5.4 knots.  Lots of water coming over the deck and blasting the dodger.  The weathermen know their stuff after all.

Saturday's run from Deltaville to Norfolk proved to be even more exciting. The wind was NW at 25 to 30 kn.  We were broad reaching and the heavy bay chop built into 3' rollers.  Even fewer boats ventured out today, but we were not about to stay in port. The non-sensible  Ocean Star and Wild Thing were out at first light reaching South to Hampton and Norfolk at 9 to 11 knots !!!!  Under a 100% jib and double reefed main the auto pilot surfs the boat very well.  We averaged 9 knots on the 45 mile run to Hampton .  What a ride !!!  More nick knacks on the floor, but I cleaned them up before Jan arrived.

We finally saw Larry Williams and Crew from Sea Goddess in Norfolk after chasing them around the Caribbean for 2 years.

Tomorrow we head South towards smaller latitudes and warmer weather !!!!

See you on the water.

G1 and J1

Wild Thing