It has been a bit cooler here on the water this week. There has been a thick fog roll in as the cooler air flows across the water. It burns off by noon but is thick and cool in the mornings. Visibility less than a mile or so. No problem with bumping into anything, but navigation is by the compass and dead reckoning, or the GPS. It can be a bit freaky when you can’t see anything in any direction!

I got my new additional solar panel installed and it seems to be working great. The 2 panels work together and have different power generating characteristics so between the 2 of them I should be all set to not have to plug in to shore again. (although I will admit that today I plugged to the shore for about 10 minutes to run my hot glue gun and glue up some plastic wall cover stuff inside a kitchen cupboard. It just seemed too easy to not have done it It was right there for goodness sake! I may be a Luddite but I’m not stupid!

I sailed into my slip again today without the engine, and it was a stronger wind than last time. It almost stopped me dead in the water just as I kissed the edge of my dock and I was able to step down and pull myself on in the rest of the way. I guess that counts! (My neighbor Mike was there watching and said I should have had my engine in the water and idling just in case…)

He and I then headed out to go sailing in in his boat. The wind was really piping, At least 25 knots plus , and we expected a rollicking good time. As we headed out into the main channel and raised the main sail the tiller broke off right in my hand! (the tiller is the horizontal handle part that turns the rudder that controls the direction of the boat. Sort of important !) These tillers are about 3 inches thick, made of many thick layers of very tough wood glued together and are tough as an oak tree, but I guess over time they can start to delaminate and that is what happened here. It fell apart at the base of it where it attaches to the top of the rudder.) We were only a few yards from a rocky bank behind us with the wind blowing hard right in our faces, pushing us towards the rocks. I hollered to Mike to go put out his anchor off the bow while I used what was left of the tiller to keep her pointed into the wind. We got the anchor put out and the sail down and were safe, and he then used the radio to call Vessel Assist (the nautical version of AAA). While we were waiting we had pulled out the spare tiller he had on board and were putting the last bolts on when they pulled up and we cheerfully told them thanks anyway but we had it all under control and we motored on back to the slip. I took the rest of the afternoon to reinforce my tiller with epoxy to ensure that doesn’t happen to me! (I do carry a spare also but if it breaks it is sure to be at a very inconvenient time…. ) By the way, my spare that came from the previous owner, is a wooden baseball bat with the fat end shaved down flat on 2 sides and holes drilled so it would fit into the metal socket at the top of the rudder. Kind of cool! Every sailor that I show it too thanks that is just the coolest thing!