Size isn't everything

Last weekend we were planning on going to Ocracoke. We had even invited some friends to go with us. Luckily for them, they had 'other plans'.

We got to the boat at about 1130, and were ready to depart at 1230. The forecast was for winds 10-15 from the NE throughout the weekend. As Ocracoke is precisely NE from our dock, this would mean tacking, or motoring, the whole day. It was blowing about 5-10 at the dock, just as we expected.

But when we got out into the open waters of the Neuse, it was more like 15-20, with gusts to 25. And the 'Pamlico Chop' was a frenzy of short interval, steep sided swells that would, depending on our direction, roll the boat from rail-to-rail or pound the boat with shuddering crashes as we popped from up on one wave to down on the next. So we decided to go in the one direction where the chop didn't matter so much--southwest.

We headed into one of our favorite Neuse River anchorages, the South River, sailing at 6 knots in 20 knots of wind (real sailors would tell you the TRUE wind, but I can only give you the APPARENT wind, sigh) with only about 60% of the genoa out, and no main.

This time we checked the anchor set twice, as we didn't want to be dragging in these winds. We were enjoying ourselves, but were glad not to have to cater to guests in this unsettled weather. We still weren't sure what we would do the next day, but sailing to Oriental for the day was a popular alternative.

Until, that is, it rained all night and the forecast for all of Saturday was more of the same. The wind was still forecast at 15-20 knots. The waves were still forecast at 2-3 feet (size isn't everything, those nasty waves from yesterday were only "2-3 feet" as well). We headed back to the dock, and while still raining and blowing, it seemed calm and quiet compared to the soup-bowl out on the Neuse.

We DROVE to Oriental in the rain, and arrived happy and dry at the Bean for our ice cream and coffee. I immediately pulled out my ipod touch, checked the stock market results for Friday (bad, but I still had a few dollars in my retirement account) and then checked out Harbor Cam at towndock.net and there was our car parked on Hodges Street! And there we were walking up to the Bean in our yellow rain jackets! Instant gratification.

The rest of the weekend was spent accomplishing chores of no great interest, except for the winch maintenance. It's hard to call it maintenance when we've had the boat for over three years and this is the first time we have delved into the winches.

We have 7 winches, 2 Barient 28s as secondaries and 2 Barient 18s on the mast that were original equipment. That means they are 20 years old. The primaries and main are self tailing Lewmars. Bob decided to tackle the Barient 28's first.

Sunday morning was MUCH nicer, occassional sprinkles, and finally, some blue skies. Which was good, because the winch disassembly was much harder than anticipated. At one point we had most of our neighbors over watching as we used the crowbar to pry off the winch insides. These are big, sturdy winches, and if that part had suddenly come loose...it would have made a big splash. If that had happened, I'm sure we would have replaced them with smaller, self tailing winches, because, you know, size isn't everything.

At last, with lots of effort and lots of PB Blaster, we got both Barients partly disassembled. Our neighbor checked out the B28 schematic online, and sure enough, those parts that looked welded together were just RUSTED together. We decided to work on separating these pieces once we were at home.

While we (mostly Bob) worked on the winches, our neighbors Josh and his dad Terry, taking a 'boys weekend', having finished their replacement of the exhaust system on their boat, had taken up fishing from the dock. Earlier, we had seen real fishermen, in real fishing boats, hanging around our dock claiming to have caught sizable fish (to them, size WAS everything).

All Josh and Terry caught were pinfish. Granted, some of these pinfish were whoppers, 4-5" long. At one point, the two got into a discussion over who had caught the smallest fish ever. Some of them were really, really small. This was just sportfishing--catch and release only--once again, size isn't everything. Except when the fish was so small they could hardly get the hook out of it's mouth. When we left, Terry was rummaging around in his lazarette. "I'm sure I've got a fighting harness in here somewhere".

The sun was shining as we left Aquila for another two weeks at home. Hopefully the next fall weekend will be more like fall and less like winter, but since we will be putting the winches back together, maybe the weather is irrelevant.