Chesapeake Bay (4/18/2015)

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.