One Sail, Two Sail, Three Sail, Four

Winds were “honking” when I woke up. It’s going to be a terrific day for sailing, I thought. I even wrote this on Woodwind’s Facebook page while trying to find a pic of the Woodwind healing nicely to add to the post.

When I arrived to the dock, the tide was down 2 feet from normal. The heavy Northwest winds were blowing the water away from the Western Shore. I called up Captain Ken and advised that we might want to raft both boats since I was concerned that Woodwind II might touch the mud in their normal boarding spot in front of the restaurant. He agreed. It was nice to see the boats rafted together. We also both decided to bend on the fore staysail on each boat. We would sail with a reefed main and just the forestaysail.

The first cruise that I had were a large group of Brownies (7-8 year old girl scouts) from Potomac, Maryland.  They enjoyed the sail and learned some good stuff about the Bay, sailing and Woodwind. With my help, we were able to get all the Brownies a chance to sail the Woodwind, even with 30 knots of wind!

The second cruise was awesome as we sailed under the Bay Bridge and back. We had some folks aboard that had “sailing a boat” as a bucket list item. It was awesome watching these folks being able to do what they have dreamed of for a long time.

On the third sail, the wind lightened a little to take the reef out of the mainsail, and Woodwind and Woodwind II sailed back from the bridge together.

For the sunset sail, I told the crew that we would be putting up the staysail to keep more speed through the patches of wind that were less than 20 knots, which made our speeds less than 5 knots. When we boarded the group, I noticed a name that looked familiar, Juliana Burzacki. She got married aboard the Woodwind and she had a very memorable wedding aboard ten years ago.  Her husband was even wearing his wedding shirt from ten years ago, a light yellow floral print. She was hoping that we still had wind on the Bay and I assured it was still windy out there.

As we set sail, I realized that the wind was dropping to less than 20 knots. So up went our fourth sail, the fisherman sail. Both Woodwinds sailed back from the bridge, and of course we raced back into the harbor for a very special sunset!  What a terrific windy day!

The Boat & Breakfast was so nice. We had amazing guests aboard that all really enjoyed sleeping aboard and the delicious breakfast on a perfect morning. Temps were in the mid 60s, and a nice breeze was filling in. Beautiful morning and the birds kept us company.