Marie joins us sailing

17 nautical miles

The spot positions didn't really do justice to where we sailed, so I photographed the screen of the chart plotter to show. I believe there is a way to screen capture from the chart plotter, but I have not found that yet, so the image sadly has the moire patterning of a photo of an LCD screen. 

A new crew member today - Jacob's older sister Marie. I had taught her to sail a couple of years ago and although she enjoys sailing, doesn't talk of it in quite the same way Jacob does, so I had forgotten to invite her. We rectified that today and she came out to see how a very much larger (than the 5 metre / 16 ft Wayfarer) boat sails.

We sailed out, did a couple of tacks for practice then off into the bay. We then thought about sailing back to the dinghy sailing club to see what they were doing, but it didn't look like there were any boats out. We hove too for lunch.

The wind came almost exactly as predicted, building during the morning then dying away by just after lunchtime so we didn't sail too far, not wanting to motor back. Jacob wanted to see if we could see the Xenobia wreck by sailing over it, but with the water the way it was (ie choppy) we would see almost nothing. You really need very still water to see the wreck. 

One thing we found is that the roller furling jams and is difficult to use at times. This is because the bearing at the bottom of the has broken losing all the ball bearings and the unit is no loner repaired to get a replacement. Last year it didn't jam as much so we shall try to find a solution.