Sunday, September 27, 2015

Hermit diaries

This is our third morning in Fishing Bay. The wind is finally starting to ease, the boat dancing and rolling just that little bit less. Though not calm by any standard, any improving of the conditions is welcome as it has been a long couple of days. We managed to eat some, sleep poorly, read a bit, and keep the batteries charged using little Honda generator. The wind ripped a seam out of the dodger, but that is the only damage we have suffered. Hopefully in the next day or two we can make a stop at the marina nearby, pump out, take on some water, leave some trash, and be on our way.

Fishing Bay, empty.

Kintala is the only boat anchored, which is a bit of a puzzle. There were a lot of boats around when we sailed here the other day. Certainly most of them found a place to wait out the weather just as we have. Where did they all go? So we have been camped out here all by our lonesome. It is a part of the cruising life that doesn't get mentioned as often as it should, particularly among those who are “coastal cruisers." After all, we don't cross oceans, striking out across the most remote places on the planet for weeks at a time, no other humans around for hundreds of miles. No. We go out for a day or two, maybe three at most. And that not very often. Most of the places we go will have a few to a whole gang of boats. There will be pot lucks and gatherings, boat visits and sundowners; all the things people normally associate with cruising.

But there will be many days like these past few as well. We have been face to face with none but ourselves since pulling up the hook in Annapolis. With the wind and rain we have barely been out of the boat since we dropped the hook here three days ago. And it isn't a very big boat. Fortunately Deb doesn't seem to mind my face.

One of the reasons to go cruising is to get away from the crowd once in a while, which is probably a little bit of a misleading thing to say. Apart from shopping, a “crowd” to us is now any group numbering more than five or six, six being about the most that will fit in Kintala's tiny cockpit for sundowners. We don't see crowds very often so, when we do, it is some kind of occasion all of its own. (Like the St. Patties Day Parade at Green Turtle or a Boat show.)

I like living in such a way that crowds are a “special occasion”.

Though a little less rolling at anchor would still be nice.

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