What a sail!

Last Saturday’s forecast looked great – bright sun, 69 degrees on the water, and the promise of good wind in the afternoon.  Now that I had decided I was going to take advantage of all wind conditions short of a small craft advisory, I was raring to go.

We settled in on Pegu Club and proceeded to wait.  The promised wind wasn’t arriving (it was under 5 knots), so I hung out on the foredeck with my Kindle.  Just when I was starting to fret that the wind would never arrive, it started stirring.  We prepped the boat, cast off the lines, and headed out.  Little did we know that we were going to have one of our best sails ever on Fishers Island Sound.

With the wind primarily from the south, we decided to head out on a beam reach towards Latimer Light near Stonington.  The wind was puffy at first, but then it steadily built to the mid-teen’s and Pegu Club was flying!  She was regularly sailing at over 5.5 knots, and even hit hull speed a few times.  We had a blast, along with tons of other sailboats out enjoying the day.

Close to Latimer Light we decided to tack and head back.  I suggested jibing, but Jeff wasn’t going for it with the wind.  Our standing rule for any given thing on the boat is that the most conservative person wins, so maybe next time.  We had to make one tack to avoid running into Groton Long Point, and then it was a straight shot all of the way back.

Heading west we were sailing towards the sun, and the water was absolutely sparkling.  It was a beautiful, deep blue.  As we passed Bluff Point State Park, the color of the water over the shallow section near the beach actually looked Caribbean blue.  I had never seen it look like that before – the angle of the sun must have been just right – and I could hardly take my eyes off of it.  I said to Jeff that someday the water will look like that everywhere we’re sailing.  We tried to take some pictures but they didn’t come out, so it will just have to remain a memory.

After we were back on the mooring, we couldn’t stop grinning.  It may have only been 11 nm, but that was one amazing sail.

Well, what Mother Nature giveth, she also taketh away.  Sunday dawned with zero wind and the promise of big storms later in the afternoon.  We ended up volunteering at another Sunday breakfast at the club, and then we whiled away a few hours relaxing on Pegu Club before packing up to beat the storms.  It was all good, though.  Nothing could take away from the high we were still riding from our amazing Saturday sail.