Our first sail was a private charter for a pretty full boat. The partners of the company were taking out their summer interns to say thank you. The bottles of bubbly were a favorite amongst the crowd. We had some very interested folks who loved sailing the boat and talking with me about navigation. We navigated up the Severn and sailed in and out of Weems Creek since there was no wind on the Chesapeake.
Second cruise, we had a nice group of teen girl scouts aboard. They were practicing all of their sailing terms on the dock before they came. We love enthusiastic girl scouts! They did great, and seemed to really enjoy the navigation portion of the cruise. We made up a fun geocaching adventure trail for them through Annapolis, so learning about navigation on the water vs. navigation on land was interesting to them.
The third cruise, the wind picked up nicely, that I decided to go clear across the Bay. We were sailing around 9 knots. When we tacked back around to head home, the wind started to fade a little. With a half an hour left in the cruise, I needed to put the 5th sail on, the D-Sail (diesel) to motor us home. The last 10 minutes it started to rain as we headed back to the dock. Everyone was ready for their complimentary ponchos.
The fourth cruise was a beauty! We had to delay 10 minutes for the rain which turned into a locally forming thunderstorm. As soon as it cleared, the double rainbow appeared and we boarded the boats. The stark contrast of our white sails with the sun on them to the dark clouds of the passing storm was beautiful! The wind picked up and we sailed across the Bay. On the way back in, Captain Ken, my dad, started racing me back in. We had so many volunteers to steer that we sacrificed speed for teaching sailing. They loved it. (I think there are photo contest entries from tonight on our website.)
The sunset was beautiful, and just as we made it to the dock the next batch of rain came.
