Gorgeous Labor Day out on the water

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It started with a gentle rainstorm and cleared up quickly enough for us to get underway.


We were only going to motor for awhile, but quickly discovered the winds were perfect for putting up the sails...  and a delightful day trip commenced.


We decided to end the day by putting down the hook and watching the sunset from the bow while eating the last of Cindy's delicious homemade chicken soup.

The day and early evening was so nice that the consensus was reached to stay put and overnight out on the Potomac while at anchor.  And in the process we achieved a number of firsts for us:

• Anchored for the first time with the new hook and rode that we picked up last fall... and discovered that the 12-pound Danforth was too small and didn't hold in the muddy bottom in winds over 7 knots.  We'll have to rethink this through.

• Tried using the iPhone as an anchoring dragging alert... and discovered the app we used was freaking worthless after I happened to wake up in the night to discover we had dragged over a half a mile, at a rate of 5-7 feet PER SECOND.  And that crappy app kept a secondary backup app from sounding the alarm as well.  Note to self -- use the anchor alert on the Garmin GPS for that next time; we know from last year that the Garmin works.

• Make sure we have good batteries.  Our house batteries -- at least one of them -- are on their last legs and we were hoping to get one last season out of them.  That's why we used the iPhone instead of the Garmin -- less current draw during the night.

• Pulled up the hook at 11:00 at night with the wind in our teeth, no electric windlass and loads of sea nettles coming up with the anchor rode.  And me with no gloves on...

• Fortunately we knew exactly where we were and we had made sure to familiarize ourselves with the various lights and markers after sundown.  So motoring back to the marina at midnight in gusty winds and big waves wasn't filled with all the drama that we had anticipated.

• We need to replace the brand new bow lights; they burned out as soon as the first big wave came over the bow and soaked them.

• We will never take a large cooler in the cockpit on a trip again; ours became a flying object in rough waves.

• We need to filter the diesel fuel; the large waves stirred up yuck in the tank and we almost didn't make it back to the marina.

• Docking in the marina just after midnight wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it would be, especially for being the very first time we ever docked at night.