Isn't it ironic?

A little too ironic...

Figured I'd stick with the song lyrics this weekend.  And this one is pretty darn appropriate.

We headed out today for a sail.
The winds were around 10mph - but with gusts up to 19 (at least that was the highest I noticed...)  Leaving the dock was by far the easiest departure we've ever had.  The tide was going out and the wind just gently pushed us off the dock and into Turner's Creek.  We were able to turn off the engine pretty early on and had a gorgeous sail almost all the way to the beach on the north side of Wassaw Island.  It was great practice for me, as I was at the helm the entire time.  We recently added a little gauge that tells you how far over you are heeling (leaning while sailing).  Apparently I've gotten comfortable up to about 15 degrees.  At 18-20 my knuckles start to turn white due to the death grip I have on the wheel.  But I just kept on sailing today.  We are really both trying to practice more - you never stop learning, that's for sure.

So after this gorgeous, relaxing, engine-less sail almost right up to our anchor point the day started to take a nose dive.

You know that repair we just did on the forward head?  Well, I have to say, it worked.  The smell is almost completely gone - and we think the only lingering odor is actually from a faulty joker valve.  (at least we think that is what is causing water to backfill into the toilet.  It's just river/fresh water - we're not currently using that toilet until we're sure the issues have been resolved.  Any other ideas on what could cause it?  The joker valve actually seemed to be fine when we broke the unit down...)  So what went wrong?  Well, when we got all set up to drop anchor and go spend the day on the beach with friends, the windlass stopped working.

What's a windlass?  Well, it's the motor that allows you to drop the anchor and then pull it back up.  And it would. not. work.  Sure, we could've manually dropped the big a$$ Bruce anchor and then manually pulled it back up - but if you've sailed in GA you know we have some serious tidal changes.  The tide was ripping out into the ocean and the wind was pushing the same direction.  While we are confident in our anchoring abilities with the windlass, we were not willing to risk having to manually pull up the anchor if it didn't set properly the first time.  The beach at Wassaw is a serious weekend hangout - there are boats everywhere.  And if we couldn't get the anchor back onto the boat quickly enough, we would've plowed right into the surrounding boats.  Or I suppose we could've motored forward to avoid the boats - but that would've meant pretty much going right over our anchor. We decided to play it safe and get back to sailing.

Mark spent about half an hour with his head in a hole in the forward (ever so slightly still smelly) head (that's where the windlass remote, etc are located) trying to figure out what happened while I motored up back up the river.  Turns out that last weekend, when we were replacing the gusher on the manual bilge pump for the fwd head, we inadvertently pulled the negative connection off of the windlass thingamabob.  Mark only found this by pulling off the electrical tape when he ran out of obvious clues as to why it wasn't working...  Earlier, when he was trying to drop the anchor, he heard a few clicks - what he said sounded like a solenoid.  I'm just gonna take his word on this, as he actually knows what a solenoid is.  So, ironically, while we fixed the major odor problem, we created a new issue.  Urgh.  (he just got back from a quick trip back to the boat to verify that it is, in fact, the solenoid.)

We sailed/motor sailed back to the dock in order to get to work on the windlass.  Unfortunately, although I thought I had stowed everything below, and although we had heeled over quite a bit on our way to Wassaw, apparently we had a big gust that took us just a tad bit further to port than our earlier trip.  Just enough to shake loose some Corelle plates...

Remember that post a while back about the percolator crashing to the floor and us thinking something broke?  Well, just in case you're wondering - you can actually tell when it's truly glass breaking below.  There was no other option.  It was undoubtedly the sound of shattering glass.

I met a medium a couple of years ago and one of the first things he said to me was that I was "horribly psychic."  His words, not mine.  Horribly.  That's the key word here.  So why was there a pile of Corelle plates in a spot that could potentially come crashing to the floor? Because I recently purchased all wooden dishes to replace the glass on the boat.  Luna Sea came with an entire set of Corelle dishes - and that was actually what I wanted, as I thought it was a safe alternative to nasty, toxic (but often cute!) plastic/melamine.  But I've recently read multiple posts by other boaters who've had issues with Corelle.  While it is relatively unbreakable (and I can attest to this!  Only 3 of about 7 plates shattered...) when it does break - look out!  Teeny tiny shards of glass spewed across the galley, onto the couch, into the forward cabin and of course into every nook and cranny on the floor.  Exactly what I was trying to prevent.  I just forgot the important step of taking them to the condo after gathering them all together last week...  I might be horribly psychic, I'm just not horribly thorough.  Geez.

As we ended up coming back to the dock much earlier than planned, the winds were still strong and the tide was almost full low (there's a 6-9 foot tidal swing here, y'all.)  We would normally have tried to dock at slack tide, but we were just on the tail end of low tide and didn't want to bob around and wait on slack tide.  (we may not know fully how to sail yet - but we've got some serious experience with these tides after 16 years...) Don't forget we're also in a new slip and we've only gone out a few times since the move.  I decided to take my time and just give it a go.  Well, I gave it around 8 go's.  They were mostly all patient, too.  But Mark finally had to take the wheel and get us into the slip.  He did a good job - I'd already shown him 8 different ways not to do it.

We both went to work - I was cleaning up glass while he took our pups back to the air conditioned condo and grabbed the Shop Vac so I could clean up all those tiny dagger shards of Corelle.  This is also when we took apart the joker valve but couldn't find any debris/problems...  We finally just went to the condo, cooled off (97 today with a million % humidity), plopped on the couch and called it a day.

So how was your weekend?