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Rainbows Lightning Sunset

 

direct youtube link

 

Intense storm front came through this evening. Temperature dropped 25 degrees in just a few minutes. Ten miles west of here, the same storm dropped hail the size of half dollars.

It passed quickly. Behind it the clouds broke up just as the sun was going down. For a while there was a double rainbow, lightning, and a sunset all in the same sky. Lightning actually shooting through the rainbow. Amazing.

Didn’t have my camera with me, jut grabbed a little with the phone. I really should just keep a good camera with me all the time.

 

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Rain Consolation ~ Old Bay Club 2016

Lunch Break on Grays Creek

 

The annual Spring Chesapeake Float was scheduled for this weekend, with the largest gathering so far planning to meet on the Maryland Eastern Shore near the Honga River. But as the launch date approached, so did a very big and very unpleasant weather system, stretching from Florida to Canada. Days of cold rain and high winds forecasted, gusting to 30kts. We decided to postpone.

 

Big Front on Friday

 

Some of the guys with more flexible schedules hope to get some time on the water today, switching to the Sassafras River at the north end of the Bay where conditions may moderate. We had a great trip there a few years ago. I hope they get good weather. The rain has passed (with flash flooding here), but as I write this the wind is still blowing about 20kts, gusting to 30.

I’m sitting this one out, and will try to use the time off for several trips coming up in the next few weeks. As consolation, I have some pictures and video from a trip back in November that I never got around to posting.

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Jame River, near Jamestown

 

Continue reading “Rain Consolation ~ Old Bay Club 2016”

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Friends in Fine Places

Barred Island, Maine

A great trip to Maine, we were very sorry to leave. Plenty of great stuff to post in the coming weeks.

 

 

While in Brooklin we got to meet the nice folks at OffCenterHarbor. They had several new videos in the works, one of which is an introduction to small craft festivals and raids around the world, including St. Michaels. In the video just released, several boats seen here in our Chesapeake fleet, good friends, make some notable appearances. If you look close, you may also notice short clips from videos posted here in the past.

Much of their footage was shot at the Small Reach Regatta (SRR) there in Brooklin. Most of our local fleet gathered there again this year with other boats from all over. Harris and Barbara in Mabu, Eddie and his daughter Leney in Una . . . Great seeing them on the big screen. They make it pretty clear why this sort of small boat sailing is so addictive.

The two boats, Mabu and Una, are sailing side by side at the beginning of a video shot on a beautiful windless day we spent last fall on the Chickahominy:

 

Sea of Glass series of posts starts here

 

Eddie has a post up on his blog about their trip to SRR, along with a link to a beautiful set of photos by Leney.

Lingering Lunacy – Una Cameos

Lingering Lunacy – A Week in Maine

I know the OCH crew is out in Port Townsend at the moment for the festival there this weekend, and hope they bring back more good material we’ll see soon. In the meantime, one they made a couple of years ago is available to watch outside the paywall:

 

 

Here on the east coast, we have MASCF (Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival) coming up in a few weeks in St. Michaels. When the festival last year had to be cancelled in advance of a hurricane, it sort of left a hole in a season of great sailing for most of us. We’re all really looking forward to it this year.

 

 

 

 

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Not Canoeing

 

 

We planned a canoe trip. Once or twice a year we do a float down the James, which winds its way through our little town. Any easy and pleasant trip, we can hitch a ride upriver to Hatton Ferry or Warren Ferry landings, drop in, and float down through the countryside for a few hours, arriving again at the old Scotts Landing in the heart of town. Continue reading “Not Canoeing”

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Wooden Wayfarers in Scotland

 

While researching roller furling for the Lightning, I came across some nice footage of wooden Wayfarers sailing in Scotland. Lovely stuff. (You’ll notice roller reefing and roller furling on these two boats.)

I’ve almost bought a Wayfarer several times, but they’re hard to find on this side of the pond. They’re like slightly smaller double-chined versions of the Lightning, but typically fitted out for cruising rather than racing.

There a small fleet of them that sail in the Chesapeake and Carolina Sounds, many of the same places I frequent. I’ve learned a lot from reading their logs and message boards, found here:

http://www.wayfarer-international.org/WIC/Cruise.Logs/Cruise.Logs.index.html