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Pointing the boat

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To have a destination on a sailing adventure is to not actually understand what it means to live underway.

Fort Pickering

I think maybe Chuck Berry understood.

I don’t mean to say that having a place you’d like to be isn’t a nice thing to think about.

Working System

It’s always nice to have goals.

Butterfly Hatch
But once you get underway, you sail the boat!
Fame Aloft

I (James) have been focused on my new writings, the boat and the Hunter-Gatherer aspects of our aquatic lives and haven’t really been very attuned to the fact that our sailing experiences have been slim this summer because of…

The Ridgeline

Life’s non-aquatic aspects mostly.

Friday's sail ready

Dena works quite a few miles inland so the fact that we haven’t been doing a lot of sailing this summer has been weighing heavy on her as of late.

But when you’re shipshape and kitty safe…

Oh, Gato...

All you have to do is haul the main, tie the dink to the mooring, toss off the lines and you’re underway!

Aloft

And let me tell you, we were completely underway. Just like we were crossing an ocean.

Naugus Head

Pointing the boat on a broad reach as far down east as that light south-east breeze would take us we made for Manchester By the Sea to survey a southern approach. Why, the fuck, not.

Das rig...
The sailing was perfection there and back. Our speed never rose above our classic daily average of 4.2 knots giving us the thrill we needed to prove, once again, that we are underway. No matter how long we need to stay in any particular geographical area we will always be underway.
Das rig...
We tacked at Green Bouy 11 just south-west of Great Misery Island and took the freshening breeze all the way back to Salem with nary a powerboat wake to piss us off.
Baluga Greyfinger in cute mode

Another sea story of a no-hyjinx sailing day is worth telling, for sure. If for no other reason than to just be able to relax and enjoy the perfection of it all. That in itself is a rare enough pleasure and worth reflecting upon but the fact that we just pointed our home, S/V S.N. Cetacea, to a place we’d never been before and the Earth’s forces took us there and back safe and full of love and wonder for our natural world made yesterday’s wanderings another truly incredible adventure.

“…with no particular place to go!”(*)

*C. Berry


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