Racking up the miles...

Yessir, Nomad added 30.7 miles to her log this weekend. (Well, she would have if she actually had a log.) Now I know some would scoff at such a modest number but there are a couple of extenuating circumstances. We didn't leave the pier Friday, heat and thunderstorms in the forecast, (and on the RADAR) keeping us close to the festivities. (Thank you Paradise, that was a fun gathering!) The TRWs were a spectacular lightning show, near continuous flashes for hours.

Saturday was a marina GPS poker run. Sail to 4 way points on the lake, walk to two more, draw six cards, buy a seventh for $2, and win. Or maybe not. Deb's pair of nines beat my pair of fives, which, I think, made us last and next to last. But we didn't start sailing until late in the morning, had to be back at the pier by 1800, and had a fixed course to follow. Well, sort of fixed. Don't tell anyone but I might have helmed Nomad a bit close to the first mark. (Actually it was the 4th mark but we were doing the course backwards because...well, never mind.) We didn't "round" the mark so much as drift over it, which resulted in it getting hung up on our keel, which meant I had to go over the side to free the boat (or the mark, depending on the point of view) and thus the mark wasn't actually at the GPS coordinates listed on the route sheet when the rest of the fleet went looking for it. Everyone knows you can't trust those darned space satellites.

After the party we headed to our favorite cove for the night, sailed off the anchor this morning and racked up the rest of our 30.7 NM. This in winds that never exceeded 7 or 8 knots all weekend (and when it got that high we were thinking "gust"). Whatever else, when it comes to light air sailing nothing is as good a teacher as a land locked, mid-western lake in August. We were really glad we had our big drifter in working order once again. Late afternoon and we were heading to the pump out when Gabe invited us along on his big catamaran for a finish-off-the-weekend ride. Tango seems to make her own wind and we romped across the lake a couple of times leaving small rooster tails in our twin wakes.

With any luck this will be our last hot / calm weekend of the season. Deb and I are off the next 3 weeks wondering around doing other things; MotoGP in Indy next week, then sailing around Manhattan Island the two weekends after that. Our first real open water experience. I suspect a word or two about that adventure will show up here eventually.