Cantler's and Poossers

This past weekend Elaine invited me to sail with her on a Jet 14, and so I gave that a whirl. It was a lot of fun. The Jet is a very manageable boat (translation: it's kinda underpowered). Elaine was a fun person to sail with, and the folks in the fleet are an enthusiastic and fun-loving bunch. Since it's a manageable boat, people sail them with their kids and it's just kind of a cool scene.

We had some pretty bad thunderstorms roll through on Saturday afternoon that forced us back into the club around 1 PM, whereupon the keg was tapped and food was brought out and we proceeded to spend the afternoon drinking and eating and socializing. Parrish had wanted to organize a trip to Cantler's with some of her friends, but I wasn't sure about the weather until around 4 it started to clear up and we decided to put together a group and head over there. In all we had 11 people on board and Luke & Suze met us over there for a total of 13. Unfortunately I don't have pix of us all ripping through the crabs at Cantler's, but I do have some pix from the sail over...

Seamonster and I get ready to roll out.

Dorian keeps the jib in perfect trim.

Bruce, Will, and Seamonster watch for puffs coming from behind.

James explains the finer points of sail trim to Parrish and her friends while Bruce listens in.

Elaine keeps a sharp eye on the mainsheet trim.

After we were done at Cantler's we motored back to Annapolis (it would have been an upwind sail so we decided to be lazy). We tried to navigate out the mouth of Mill Creek using only the instruments, but this didn't quite work out as well as I had hoped, and we found the earth. Fortunately, it was a soft ground, and we came off easily. Once we got back to Annapolis, some folks decided that they needed to take off and go home for an early start on Sunday, but the more intrepid amongst us (that would be Erika, James, Elaine, Will, and myself) took a poll and decided that we weren't yet finished and that we'd stop off at POOSSERS before we'd call it a night. So we headed over there and got rock star parking right on the bulkhead. Coincidentally, we ran into Rook Singer (one of the SJC sailors who I coached back in the day) who helped us tie the boat off and we headed in to get some drinks. Things went downhill from there as Erika and Elaine decided that it was time to molest the mannequin, so they got into it:

Starting off it seemed so benign...

But it quickly degraded into molestation from ahead and astern!

At the end of the evening, I think the mannequin felt he (she?) had been man-handled...

On the way back to the mooring both Erika and Elaine passed out while Will, James and I kept the ship moving...go figure. The night didn't end till 0230 and given that we started drinking at 1400, it was a solid 12 hours of beer and drinks. It was TOUGH to get up for sailing on Sunday, but well worth it as we were treated to a beautiful sunny day with gorgeous breeze. Thanks to Elaine for having me out!

No news is good news!