Friday

Friday 09/17/2004

William and Tracy show up at 7:00am after a long 11 hour trip through the night from Georgia.

Claudia, Cas, Mark, Patience, Nancy and Peter all head out to Rock Hall to launch their Vic's and get onto the Bay.

Donald is late.

Upon arrival William and Tracy find nothing happening with the VicFest ... they even think that maybe it was canceled due to Ivan, and begin to think they are the only folks to attend this years fest.

William and Tracy sail the Marina looking for any sail with the unique
round emblem with the "V" in it. NO LUCK!

Tracy spots movement at the launch!

William heads back to the Marina hoping to see more attendees!

Cas, Claudia, and Mark are setting up their boats.

About 2 hours later the entourage arrives!

The Fest is ON. Mark and Cas drop their boats into the Chesapeake.

The Vic's Take to the Bay!

William McVay, and Cas Ziezio take to the Bay.

About 2:00pm Donald shows up, hits the boat launch and decides to join the rest into the drink.

About 10 minutes later Mark joins in. Cas turns back, and three remaining boats head out to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in guarded weather conditions. The Bay Bridge is 11 miles to the south. Thunderstorms are predicted.

The wind is out of the south east, the sky out to the Bay Bridge and beyond to Annapolis is clear and sunny with heavy dark clouds to the north and east of us. They take off on a steady reach towards the bridge on a single tack.

They make great time with speeds of between 5.5 and 6.3 knots consistently. Forty Five minutes later the group is still on their heading. The sailing is beautiful!

Mark and William decide to take a heading closer to land and bear east, Donald heads straight across the Bay to the Bay Bridge now 7 miles in the distance. Soon after that Don turns on the GPS and starts to take speed and distance readings to the bridge.

There is now a 1 mile + distance between Don and the other two Vic's on their more easterly heading.

The Weather!

The cloud cover begins to thicken and the group loose the sun.

The wind ratchets up about 4 knots, and the waves begin to lift their boats and pound at the hulls. They are deep in the center of the bay by now. The wind and waves take on a new and challenging feel than those waves closer to shore.

Swells are at 3-5 feet, and the waves have blown tops with some white caps in the distance. They keep heading for the Bay Bridge as the weather (although in a changing pattern) continues to be somewhat stable. This is looking like the sail of the weekend!.

The blue sky returns above, but the as the pack gets closer to the bridge, the waves build even more, the swells build, and the wind stiffens. The distance to the bridge is now 4 miles, down from 11.5 at the start.

They have sailed 7+ miles in just less than an hour and a half.

Don checks the readings on the GPS for speed and still finds the Vic team is making 5.8 - 6.2 knots consistently.

Is it safe?

The sky suddenly darkens, and Don turns on the weather radio to check for conditions before going much further.

Ivan is to the west, hitting Washington and Baltimore with wind and rain. It is slipping up the eastern seaboard, but staying just west of the Chesapeake.

The Radio then barks out "Tornado Watch! for the Chesapeake Bay area, small craft advisory in affect until 6:00pm"

It is 4:15 pm.

The group is 7 miles out into the Chesapeake with Tornado Watch and Small Craft Advisories in effect.

The sailing is great, the wind is warm, and the sun is still keeping the wave and wind action somewhat under control.

The sun creeps back and the even though the waves and the wind are still there, there is something more comforting about sailing in "Peak Awareness" conditions. The group continues to push on ... Mark and William try to catch up to Donald but he is too far off of their heading. They decide to turn back at about 5 miles from the bridge.

Don is a mile and a half ahead of them, 3 miles from the Bay bridge. The sun is overhead but there are ominous clouds approaching the Bay Bridge with no clearing in sight south of it. Don decides that the risk is too much in the unfavorable conditions of Ivan, and decides to turn around in a short lull that gives him just enough time to jibe in between waves.

The boat instantly picks up speed. Don glances down at his GPS ... 7.8 knots!

The boat is surfing down a wave face, sitting in the trough for just a second, rocking, then getting lifted up and dropped on the face of another wave repeating the surf. The boat is being pushed beyond its hull speed.

Epilog

Don said the Vic was remarkably controllable during the return trip. It was a single beam reach back to Rock Hall, with consistent speeds of 6.5 to 7.5 knots.

The Bay Bridge is so large that Don thought he was about a mile away when he turned around. When he checked his GPS later that day, he found that the remaining distance to the bridge from the turnaround point it was still 3.2 miles in the distance!

That would have taken him another 30 minutes or more to get there, and an additional 30 minutes added to the 1.5 hours to get back.

As it turned out, the Tornado Watch was in the distance on the other side of the Bay to the north, and by the time all the boats got back to Rock Hall the weather was clearing again.

The sail was one of the most vigorous of any VicFest (up to now!).

It was a great sail, and a challenge ... a perfect start to VicFest 2004!

Dinner

Dinner was held at Pruitts Restaurant.

The Molters were present along with Mark, Patience, Claudia, Cas,
Peter, Nancy, Don, Sandy, William and Tracy.

Of course Dons late, sometimes getting the website updated so the folks at home
can keep up with our adventures takes precidence over food!

"He looks like a tourist" someone shouts ... Well, I guess its just a part of trying to get the details to the website as quickly as possible.

We talked about "the recipe", and Caroline promised that next time we got together she would bring it for breakfast.

The Dinner was a robust mix of fresh seafood!

Don still has not figured out the fine details of eating crab!

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