Thursday, September 6, 2007

Northport at Anchor

I looked at the GPS this morning at Port Jefferson and we had circumnavigated our anchor! The plot of the GPS was a neat circle with the anchor in the middle. Raising the anchor with the windlass was slow as I had to stop every few feet to use the washdown pump to rinse off the mud in the links of chain. Anchoring can be messy.

Leaving the harbor we found a 10 kt south wind so we put up sail and headed west. It is hard to describe the pleasure of sailing. To non-sailors it makes little sense to go a few kts towards your destination with a lot of work. However, to sailors it's a dream. To be on the same tack as we were today for 5 hours, varying the sail trim as the wind increased and slackened, to have the boat respond to the helm, to feel the wind, the sun... I took a photo of Ann at the helm which better explains all this than I can. Sailing is a great pleasure that's hard to describe, we both love it. We were able to sail all the way into the anchorage.

The Northport anchorage is a turn to the north once past the end of the sand spit. One reason we like it is that there's a place for Lance to run free. We look for such anchorages when Lance is with us. We're watching a storm around North Carolina develop but so far there's not much predicted for New York in the way of precipitation. We'll keep an eye on it.


Follow our progress at Return Trip.



PS. some have asked how to download the photos. First, left click on the photo in the blog. You will then see a larger photo appear in your browser (the full resolution photo). Then right click with your cursor somewhere over the photo and choose "copy" from the list of choices (by left clicking on "copy"). Then you can paste the photo in your favorite photo editing program for storage or printing.

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