Day 8 - 1/9/11

I was awakened at 6:30 and staring at a cuddy cabin power boat about 10 feet off our bow.  They had anchored a good 200 yards from us last night and with the wind, they had dragged their anchor almost hitting us.  One of the things that you have to have is a sufficient anchor that will hold your boat.  Dennis saw a boat similar in size to the one that almost hit us, and his dingy anchor was the same size as the one that they had.  For this trip, we increase the poundage of our anchor by 10 pounds to 35 and added 80 feet of chain to keep us put.  Every night I take GPS coordinates and set the anchor alarm.  So far we have not dragged (knock on wood). 

After our near miss, we were up for the day.  No traveling today, just staying put and doing some projects.  Dennis came by and we tuned our rig.  We next put up our new main to set the reefing lines and when we hoisted the main, we noticed that the upper portion of the sail extended past the back stays.  PANIC, new sail, no old sail aboard, what to do.  We called our son to get him in the loop that he may have to send us our old sail.  I called FX Sails with the problem, and the manager got back to me in about 10 minutes of my call.  We spoke for several minutes and he noted that this was a "modern" main, and that it is not unusual for a main to extend past the back stays.  He said to spray some Sail Kote on the places where the sail would hit the back stays, and they would slide through, which they did.  With this larger roach, we should get some additional speed from this sail.  With the main raised, I showed Beth how to lower the main and put it in the Sail Pack that we had made several years ago.

It was a beautiful sunny day, with a breeze that kept things mild.  We watched a sea plane take off several times ferrying people to some island destinations.  We put the dingy in the water and cruised around our anchorage.  I feel like I am finally starting to relax even though I did some work this afternoon.