Hiding from the wind in Solomon's

Arrived at Solomon's Island last evening at 5:45 after having left Baltimore at 7am that morning...66 miles in 10 3/4 hours (avg speed 6.14 knots) which is better than I had hoped, but the boat is great. A little bit of the credit goes to the fresh bottom paint put on two weeks ago, but a lot goes to the goodness of the boat. I motor sailed the entire way, with the main up throughout the trip and the staysail up when the wind was at least a little off the nose (which was only the case for less than 1/2 of the trip. With the wind at 30 degrees off the nose, and blowing 12  knots, and the motor at 2800 rpm, the boat was moving at 7.2 knots, with the wind on the nose and the staysail furled it was moving at about 6 knots against the wind and waves..pretty good.

My goal was to get to Solomon's before sunset. I was initially going to anchor, but I was getting tired (somehow, even though the boat is doing all the work and I"m just watching, huddled up under the dodger, I was getting tired..curious) and figured that going into a marina would be easier. I called Zahniser's and they had a slip but they were going home at 5pm. I whined (always a good negotiating tactic) and they allowed that someone could stay till 6pm, but no later. I would call every hour or so to report my progress and confirm that someone would be there to greet me.
Sure enough, at 5:45 I was in front of the docks, radioed in and was answered instantly. A nice fellow came out to the dock and helped me tie up. My friends in the other two Island Packets (who had travelled from Annapolis (4 hours closer to Solomon's) and are more accomplished and experienced sailors, anchored nearby, just up the creek from Zahnheisers)
I tidied up a bit, wandered up to a restaurant that is in the Marina (one of the reasons I chose this marina)
After a nice meal I walked the few steps back to the boat, tried to read and fell asleep by 10pm..I didn't wake till 7:30am which is a record for me...lately I've been sleeping 4 - 5 hours a night. Sailing, and a little exhaustion, seems to be good for sleeping!

We've decided to stay here till Thursday morning. The wind was strong today (from the South of course) and is forecast to be even stronger (u to 30 knots out of the South on Wednesday). It is supposed to moderate, and rotate to the west by thursday morning, when it will be off to Deltaville - 50 miles to the south. One boat did go out today, but after about 1/2 hour came back...it was too much wind to try to go south.

Hayden and Radeen, retired teachers from a suburb of Philadelphia and owners of Island Spirit, an Island Packet 35, invited me to lunch with Ron and Maryanne Smith. He is a retired flight controller. They live in Solomon's and own an Island Packet 380 like mine. The other couple sailing with us stayed on their boat to fix some instruments that quit during the trip down.

Later in the afternoon we all got together again for snacks and were joined by 3 other couples sailing south, two from Nova Scotia, but I never heard where the last couple were from...Of course the conversation was mostly about voyages past..they mostly talked about the Bahamas, which they have all been to several times.

For dinner, I finally started to attack the food I had packed away. I had taken one of the frozen chickens that Molli had cooked and frozen out of the freezer last night and left it out overnight, and in the morning put it into the fridge. Tasted fine with some salad.
Tomorrow I plan to "pan grill" a steak and see how that works out (it will likely be too windy to barbecue)

One of the things I accomplished today was to fix the tracking system. You can now see the trip so far (click on the "Click here" on the right). The data is now coming from a Delorme inReach device that transmits GPS location every 10 minutes via Iridium satellites. It is received by Spotwalla that then displays it on a map. A very nice person from Spotwalla (Jason) helped me understand what I was doing wrong during the course of a back and forth series of email during the afternoon. Awesome technology and great support.
The advantage of the Delorme device is that it doesn't depend on cell phone connectivity and will work even when I go off shore. It can also be used to send SOS in an emergency (it is registered with an emergency service, for which I pay a subscription) which is nice but hopefully not necessary.

No photo's today..I'll do better tomorrow