Clawing our way home

A few weeks ago, I realized that Alice was being short-changed on sailing. I had been racing a bit but had not taken the missus out on Messing About for several weeks. On a whim one Saturday, we headed down to the club for an afternoon sail.

There was no one around at the club and Raritan Bay was light on traffic of any kind – a few fishing boats, the occasional tug and a couple of other sailboats. Readers of this blog will know that our sailboat, a 26’ S2 Messing About has many virtues but a working engine is not one of them. Over the summer, Alice and I have become proficient at sailing on and off the mooring. At the risk of jinxing it, we have sailed in and out of a crowded mooring field without hitting anything and picking up the mooring first time mostly.

The wind was unusually light. The current was ebbing and quite strong. I gave it one look and suggested we sit and wait. Alice gave me a look that questioned my manhood, pointing out that there  other boats were out sailing. So off we sailed. Well sorta.

It was more a case of floating with the current with the sails up. As the mooring field is on the edge of a busy shipping channel that tankers navigate fairly often, I suggested we drop the hook for a while.

About 30 minutes later, it looked like the wind was filling in from the Southeast so we started sailing again. The wind verrrrrrry light and it felt like half our speed over the ground was from the current. After a mile of this, I suggested to Alice that we turn back. Without an outboard, I was concerned that we would have to wait for the tide to turn to get home.

At this point the wind died entirely. The bay was millpond-like. I dropped the hook again.

Every five minutes a puff would blow out of the two rivers that converge in front of our mooring field. Alice and I got into a rhythm of watching a puff head towards us, raising the anchor and with the sails sheeted in tight and flat wait for the light puff to move us 200-300 yards then drop the anchor again. We literally clawed our way back to the mooring field.

Picking up the mooring was especially interesting as the Northern end of the fleet is in the current coming out of Arthur Kill that flows from the North into the Eastern end of the Bay. The Southern end of the fleet is moored in the current from the Raritan River that flows West into the Easter end of the Bay. Our mooring is right in the middle o the fleet where the two currents converge making it very tricky to use the currents to drift in a predictable direction towards our mooring stick. After 30 minutes or so of laying the puffs and figuring out the currents and light air and drifted slowwwwwly up to our mooring.

Not the most invigorating sail but satisfying all the same.