Summer's gone

The air is chilly now and the sky fills with sweeping clouds with gray bottoms that regularly hide the sun.  The wind is unpredictable -- one day fierce and the next day cotton candy light.  So we motor when we must.  Each weekend becomes more precious as the autumn over takes us.  Today, we anchored at 3PM after motoring against a very light wind in the Rhode River.  John just finished the crossword puzzle my brain could not get its arms around.  I sit with my iPad writing a long due entry here in the blog.  To our starboard, three smaller sail boats are rafted together. Men's loud voices break the air. They sound more like power boaters than sailors.  Perhaps they'll get drunk early and fall asleep.  Otherwise, we may be in for a noisy evening.   No matter.  We enjoy what we can.  Come the end of October, we put Forte Vento up for the winter and return to spending our weekends among the city folk in Washington, DC.

Sun's gone now behind some thickening clouds.  We'll bury ourselves under the comforter tonight and rock gently as the water washes under the boat.  Good night!

Flies in the cockpit!

There are good sailing days and then there are the days that make you question your sanity.  Today was one of the those days.  We sit below decks on the hood in Plaindealing Creek across the Tred Avon river and the town of Oxford waiting for the sun to go down and cool the cockpit.

We left the dock this morning with gray clouds overhead and little wind in the air.  We motored Forte Vento across the Bay instead of attempting to sail in the very light wind. Bored and tired,  John retired to the V-berth for a nap while I listened to the humming engine and watched for crab pots.  Rained sprinkled and what little wind there was came across the back of the boat.  I was joined by a host of flies -- plain ol' flies you normally get at a picnic or hovering around a freshly baked pie set to cool in the window (does anyone do that anymore?)  With the wind pushing on your back instead of slapping you on the face as you cross the water, the cockpit becomes a free ride for these buggers.  Along with the ride, they decided to have lunch -- my legs and feet.  In self defense,  I armed myself with our purple fly swatter and went to war.  I killed 12 before John came back up on deck to take over the battle.

We did get to sail.  As we rounded the Green #7 bell upon to enter the Choptank River, the wind picked up to almost 10 knots and our heading allowed us a pleasant reach (wind across the beam). But, to our surprise, the flies liked the idea and stayed instead of taking off for clamer cockpits.  After sailing all the way  (3 hours of success!) into our anchorage, we discovered some of the buggers had inflitrated our living quarters below decks.  Up went our screens and out came the swatter again.  There were no pleasant deaths, just dead flies.  Let's hope tomorrow brings more wind, less flies and sunshine.