The yacht club had a wedding, so we made sure we were not in the way and we took off around 12:15 after picking up two subs at Wawa. The wind was out of a direction that was not predicted by the weather service, so we had a half hour motor out before raising the sails and drifting for a while (the winds were very calm). It was a great time to eat our lunch and flush it down with a beer. After a while the wind picked up and we had a great sail with the wind coming from the south east right abeam.
At the point we were planning to turn around we encountered a pod of porpoises; they dove under the boat and one chased the boat for a while, almost touching the rudder. Great to see that there are still many left, after last year's die off. Eventually we had to turn back, and the wind picked up to 10 knots or more and we had a great sail. Being pushed a bit of course by the current we decided to tack and, right on the dot, the wind started shifting to the west, as was initially predicted for the day. This required that we changed plans all the sudden and we had to drop the sails to get back into the creek. Google tells me we did 17.6 miles today or 15+ nautical miles; great for a four hour sail.
Below are two pictures one of our course. I use a great app on my tablet called MX Mariner that allows me to record track and download them to Google Earth. It is a great app, that helps me a lot. I strongly recommend that app. On the way we saw a heron on one of the channel markers. Usually there are ospreys all over the place, but in the winter the herons appear to take over. In general though there are so many birds on the Bay this time of year, including cormorants, pelicans, diving ducks, and we even saw two bald eagle circling overhead. A magnificent day indeed.
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