Enough wind to get the big boys to come out and play!

You know it's going to be a good day for sailing when the forty-footers are out. Yes, we have a couple of them on the St. Croix, but we usually don't see them on the water. The old rule about boats getting used in inverse proportion to their size seems to hold. But this was too good a day to pass up. Winds were a solid 12-15mph with gusts to 18-20. The temperature was in the mid-70s and the sun was shining.

	This ketch was loaded with people, but they were really moving. I wonder what the folks on the cabintop are reading?

We had stayed up late wallpapering and decided not to set an alarm. We got to the marina after noon and had to get her rigged up, since this was our first sail after the trailer trip to Bayfield. Despite running over our anchor, we got in the water without damage and headed north. Julie took us out of the no-wake area while I uncoiled lines. After re-routing a mis-routed halyard, up went the main. Yeah! We were going to town under main alone, so I unrolled the jib to see what that would add.

"Hull speed" is the phrase. We were doing all of that with 10-15 degrees of heel. Dan was whooping it up, loving every minute of it. Mandy, disliking the heeling aspect, went below and got comfortable with a book. The best part was that the wind was from the northwest, allowing us an almost straight shot up the river. We had to tack across a few times, but much less than normal. A few gusts pushed us a little too far, but letting out the main put things to rights and didn't bother anyone. At one point I realized that, for comfort, we were letting the main luff just a wee bit instead of taking a reef. Well that was okay - we were flying along and I paid a bit more attention to sail trim.

The skipper checks the masthead windex	A full mainsail, with tell-tales streaming aft

After we were really going, we noticed two larger sailboats following us on the same tack. The closer one was a mid-20-footer and the other was a 30-footer. They weren't catching us at all. We were really moving out. Soon we all had to tack near the shoreline, having to go almost directly across the river before turning again for an up-river reach.

Checking for either noise or pollutants in the exhaust

We were getting hungry and eyeballed a stretch of beach on the Wisconsin side. We dropped the sails and motored over. "No Trespassing" signs greeted us, so we motored under the I-94 bridge to Goose Island and a deserted beach. Just past the bridge, the Washington County water patrol had stopped a powerboat. It looked like the deputies were checking for excessive noise; one of them held out what looked like a microphone towards the transom of the boat. I suppose it could also have been a monitor to test the engine exhaust. Never seen that on the water before.

Julie had brought the fixins for Gyros. She got those going while the kids played and I setup our beach chairs and umbrella. The umbrella had gotten a bit... damaged when we tried to use it as a sun shade while underway on Superior. I think a new one will be needed shortly, but it sufficed for the day.

While the kids were playing, they found a snail. Mandy remembered that Julie's dad wanted a snail for his bird feeder. Apparently, snails eat the dirt in a feeder and help keep it clean. I'd never heard that, but we put the snail in a small container with some river water and sand. Mandy named him Bob.

The Gyros were quite good, but we were in a hurry to leave - we wanted to try and make it to RibFest and the free Rick Springfield concert in Minneapolis. We packed up and shoved-off soon after eating. The wind had died too much to sail back, so the iron spinnaker was put to use. I coiled lines and put as much as I could in order while Julie and the kids took turns on the tiller.

As it turned out, we didn't make RibFest - it was too late and we were too tired. We stopped off at Julie's dad's and put Bob in his bird feeder. Hope he likes it there.

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