blue

The sky was brilliant yesterday morning, accompanied by a steady SSE wind that felt uncommonly warm for this time of year.  The night before, crossing the bridge over the Elizabeth River, I had seen at least a dozen cruisers anchored out in Crawford Bay.  By the time I launched Spartina only four or five remained, the rest of the sailboats having raised anchored and headed south on the ICW.

There was a large catamaran with the name "Improbable", which is how I sometimes think of life when I'm sailing my little yawl.

And there was "Further" which I would have thought had come a long distance, but the trimaran turned out to be a local boat.

A stout ketch named "Carisma," headed back from Annapolis to its home port in Florida, had a friendly couple on board.  They could be home in four or five days sailing "outside", they said, but would probably take a few weeks going "inside" to explore the coast.

The sailboat from the most distant port, "Mooney" out of Kiel, Germany, reminded me of the Kiel Canal and The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers.  And it also reminded me that the next book on my reading list is The Shadow in the Sands, a sequel to Riddle, written by another author who captured Childer's voice.

Yesterday may have been my last sail of the year.  The weather, as of now, does not look promising for the coming weekend.  And any thoughts I had had of trailering Spartina to Ocracoke for the Thanksgiving weekend were washed away with the on Hatteras by Hurricane Sandy.

If it was my last sail then I have no complaints.  A nice day with a steady, warm breeze and deep blue skies.  What more could I have asked for?

steve