The temperature on Saturday morning was cold for St. Petersburg – low 50's and forecast to remain below seventy for the day. But the north winds promised to remain around ten knots and the high clouds were breaking up as we let loose the lines and headed into the basin that surrounds the St. Petersburg Municipal Marina.
We were hoping for a short, relaxing day sail in Tampa Bay – our first since buying our Cal29 Play Mate last January. We were not disappointed.
We started out using our Motor Guide 54, which worked well, if a bit noisy on the stern mount, but as we passed green 1 marker the head sail went up and the motor off. From there the day unfolded with chilled blue skies and a sparkling Tampa Bay that was nearly empty. Only a few other sailors had decided to come out for the day.
Connie settled back into sailing after her hiatus of several years without a hitch. She kept us on a broad reach to the southeast until I decided to try some wing-on-wing to the south-southwest. Our goal was to be back to the slip no later than three o'clock, and we nearly made that. We took turns on another broad reach towards St. Petersburg, but my downwind leg required a tack to the north-northwest followed by a short leg into the basin.
We motor-sailed to the slip with both sails up in the light wind, which turned out to be very fortuitous. As we moved dead slow towards the outside pilings that mark the slip, I lost all steering. We started to drift south and, with our minimum forward momentum, towards our neighbor's boat. A shift to full reverse changed nothing, and when I glanced back a the motor the prop was gone.
I called to Connie, who was on the bow, that we were moving back out to the basin as I made a hard turn to starboard that cleared our neighbor's boats, but only barely.
We anchored so that I could change to the MinnKota 50 that I had on board as a spare. That, plus extra props, nuts, and so on will be standard practice from now on.
And so, even with that close call, the day went well. After Play Mate was secure and washed down we found ourselves complaining of a few aches from the day's exercise, most of which were gone after a great night's sleep.
But not our resolve to spend more time out on the water on Play Mate rather than just fixin' her up.
Brad Bates
Play Mate
St. Petersburg, FL
No comments:
Post a Comment