Finally, this was the first time this year that we went for
a sail on our boat instead of the boat of a friend. I like sailing in general, and yes, sailing
on boats from friends is great. Those
boats are usually larger, and warmer.
Our friend Ben has a Catalina 30, of which he can enclose the entire
cockpit and keep you out of the cold weather.
It was great sailing with him around Christmas time, while it was
snowing outside, and on other cold days this winter. But as a boy of the tropics, I prefer warmer
weather, and of course nothing is better than sailing your own, even if it is
inferior to other boats.
During our sail we had to test our new camera (an Olympus
TG-3). Yes I know not a Go-pro, but ;
being an avid Olympus user all my life I just gravitated to this one. Moreover, it does everything a Go-Pro does
and then some. We clipped the camera to
the mast with a monopod
and was able to take pictures using my cell phone as a remote. I used my phone as a view finder and could
use it to zoom in or out and take shots.
Great fun! On the photo below you
can see me operate the camera with my phone.
The weather was great, a few clouds in the sky and winds
around 10 knots. Temperatures were in
the mid-70s, but with the wind over the colder water it was chilly. During the sail we were reminded that it is
pine pollen season on our part of the world, and if you are not from our part
of the world you would not know what I am talking about. During pine pollen season everything gets
covered by a layer of fine yellow dust. It is amazing. While they say people are not allergic to pine pollen, on Sunday my body was not as happy as it usually is, the sky was yellow, and everything had a thin cover of yellow dust. I wrote about it before (here) almost exactly a year ago (on 4/19/2014). So interesting how closely nature is synchronized.
With the first rainstorm streams are covered
by a yellow slime and in a way it is actually indescribable. The admiral (my wife) took a picture of a
plume of pine pollen that we sailed through well off shore (maybe a mile or
two) in the Chesapeake Bay (see the photo below). What amazes me here that there must be this strange current in the water (or a combination of current and wind) that concentrates the pine pollen in this narrow band. But you can see is goes quite the distance.
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