Tilt!

The shower was exquisite; sluicing off what felt like layers of sweat, bug spray, sunblock, and general grime. Just as I closed my eyes to let the water run off my bald head and over my face the shower stall lurched to port, nearly dumping me on my sitting place. Not unexpected, right? Boats lurch. But this shower stall was in the club's bath house, sitting on solid Mother Earth at least 50 feet from the nearest body of water.

It has something to do with shower stalls and long days on the water. Seeing as Kintala had been beating up on us for most of Friday and all day Saturday, it only seemed fair to turn the tables and take her out on the lake. Before departing the pier we pulled big jib off the roller and put up an even bigger screecher that Deb found in the sail inventory. It is a gorgeous sail, looks like it has never been used, and seemed the perfect fit for Carlyle's light, mid-summer, winds. (Someday I'm going to figure out how sails get their names, screecher, reacher, staysail, jib, spinnaker, code zero, drifter...odd.)

Once free of the inlet and with both sails set Kintala started to work her way toward the dam, tacking endlessly against a fitful breeze wafting out of the south. We weren't going anywhere in a hurry but it didn't matter. There are few things better than having no place to go and going there anyway. We were exactly where we wanted to be; on the boat and underway. Hours later and with the sun finally settling toward the horizon enough to soften its relentless assault we decided to start the downwind run toward Bolder. (There was some talk of stopping in Coles creek for a swim, but we decided to keep moving. I'll gladly wrestle the anchor down and up for a night's sleep. Doing the same for a hour or so of swimming? No thanks.)

"Run" might be a bit of an overstatement. Even on her favored point of sail the best Kintala could coax out of the wind was around 2 knots. A distance the jet would cover in about 40 seconds would take Kintala slightly more than 2 hours under sail. So we sat on the boat, observed the goings on around us, (including a ranger boat going by at full song with lights flashing) and drank lemonade for the next couple of hours. By the time we were tied to the pier Kintala had been under way (more or less) for more than 8 hours.

Ocean crossers can chuckle if they like, but 8 hours was enough to give me a case of the leans...at least as long as I was in the shower.

I feel kind of bad...

...that I don't feel kind of bad.

Though it's only Friday evening we have already been at the lake for a couple of days. After a quick, 1-day, trip south in the jet (and a seriously fun time shooting a GPS approach down to a few hundred feet in the rain) the rest of the week was kind of slow. But another corporate type airplane driver was flying into St. Louis on Wednesday with a full day to spend before heading home on Friday. He lives in OH, used to sail on Lake Erie, is looking to get back on the water, and was hoping to take a look at Nomad as a way to make that happen. I have a couple of vacation days to spare so Dan and Mark (it takes two to make most jets go so Mark had a day to kill as well) picked me up at the house and we headed to the lake. Deb had gone on before to open up the little boat and get her ready to show.

Once at the lake our guests were suitably impressed at the near record high water levels, and seemed equally impressed with Nomad. There was a nice breeze blowing out of the south so we offered Dan and Mark a chance to go sailing. Mark bowed out. It seems last week they were waiting out a day on a coast somewhere and went deep sea fishing. Turns out Mark spent more time feeding the fish than he did trying to catch them, so he was content to stay on the docks.

It was a pretty nice sail. We romped across the lake flying the working jib and main sail while just missing making 6 knots a couple of times. Dan spent a good bit of time on the helm and Nomad did herself proud. We haven't gotten an offer yet, but as I stepped onto the pier after the sail hand ended, I realized we might have taken Nomad out for the last time. And I was a bit surprised at how okay I was with the thought.

I expected to be a little more attached to our little Com-Pac, but the reality is we always knew she was our "practice boat". And she has been a perfect one. I hope she finds a good home. One where she can point her bow out into the Great Lakes would be nice as well, she deserves a chance to sail bigger waters than Lake Carlyle. But what ever happens, the time has come for her to sail off in one direction, and Deb and I to take another.