Hi all!  We just came back from our first overnight (actually two nights) sailing trip away from the marina and still the vultures are going hungry. Well not quite.....During our first anchoring attempt Donna unfortunately confused the up and down foot control on the anchor windlass ( the captain did not provide detailed enough instructions with enough practise) and she got her thumb pinched. She is almost back to full capacity now. It's hard to keep her down. We had the anchorage on the Corsica river to ourselves except for some ospreys and a big fat water snake and we can not figure out how it managed to elude the ospreys. We have now sailed in 20 knot winds tacking upwind in 2-3 foot seas with reefed sails and all has gone smoothly and Windspell is very stable and sea kindly. We have also been out in our inflatable dinghy exploring the river around the marina.

Just before our first trip away from the marina, our good friend Dexter had two days of sailing with us on the bay and he very quickly realised that our GPS records all the tracks we have sailed unless we erase them. He noticed that we took him over a very well beaten path across the bay and back We of course indicated that the wind direction had been the same for all those previous days of sailing and that was why we had worn a groove in the display on the electronic screen!  

We are finding the marina is very pleasant largely because of the friendly and helpful boaters we have met. Lots of them have sail boats of the same make as ours which is one of the reasons we chose this marina and we are getting lots of advice and we use their boats as examples of how to set up ours.

 We miss the regular exercise routine we are used to at home but are making an effort to run in the mornings and stretch afterwards. There is a pool which will open soon so that should help. We plan to bring our bikes down in June and the roads are excellent with wide shoulders and picturesque country scenery.

We are learning about weather forecasting, radar interpretation, how our GPS works and also keeping up on our basic navigation skills. We have a few days of calm weather ahead and we will take the opportunity .to go out on the bay and swing our compass and create a deviation table for all points of sail.We will also check the calibration of our speed indicator and sum log (on the water odometer).

In short, there is plenty to keep us occupied but we are also looking forward to going home for a few days at the beginning of June to see our kids and friends and be in Muskoka in our own house again.

Bye for now!

Donna and Walt

Dexter takes the helm, Donna enjoys her e-reader

Looking at the well worn GPS track

On the bay

Practising our knots on a visit to historic St. Michaels

The christening

Traditional Chesapeake schooner

With our Windspell T-shirts