Port Dover Sail ..A Great Success

Well, the weekend of June 6,7,8 has come and gone and it was wonderfully sucessful.
Jane , our first mate and cook flew in from Philadelphia along with Mike Preston from St Louis. Along with my old best man Bob Becker... we headed for Dover on Friday morning. Tim Mehl had the flu so had to stay home.

About 0900 with a steady 15-18 knots out of the Southwest Nyanza took off toward Dover, an 26 mile broad reach over to Long Point from EYC and then into Port Dover on a tight beam reach for another 18 miles. Running at 6-7 knots no one saw any reason to throw up the chute. After all, this was a cruise.

Being Jane's first time on the boat she watched, learned , drove, trimmed and helped serve a wonderful turkey lunch.....with bread, you know...a sandwich chased down with a few beers. Making landfall at about 4pm we proceeded up the river to the PDYC.
Only to learn we were the first sailboat from the US in this year at Port Dover.

Saturday came too early after a wonderful lasagna, bread,salad and some delicious wine on the dock at the Yacht Club. The Captain went up the mast, an unusual event in recent years to rig up the cutter rig and running backstays to test out the storm jib. Out we go into the Long Point Bay in 15 knots of wind. Hank on the storm jib and find out we have a nice, but somewhat small staysail that could come in handy when flying chutes....as for storms, it will work well.

Around 5PM we hitched up with Hadley Jackson and Pat at the Yacht Club and started to discuss over a cocktail the best spots in the BVI's. Hadley spent five years down there and is a wealth of knowledge along with being a long term Canadian friend of mine. From there we took Jane to our traditional Perch Dinner at the Erie Beach Hotel.....
I highly recommend it because it has the finest Perch in the world caught just outside Port Dover. For your information, they are currently shipping all the production overseas at $55 a pound...Wow.....sorry America. Later at the bar I ran into Ken Wrigley whose son is the Quantum sailmaker in Tortola...I will be sure to look up Kevin.

Sunday morning was wonderful. The wind was out of the SSW and we power sailed out to the Point in 15 knots only to see it picking up more and more. Half way over in 20 knots we sighted the US Brig Niagara out of Erie and passed close abeam to this wonderful sight. Check out the pictures from this trip. Reaching the US side in a blast furnace of 90 degree wind blowing 25 we took down the rags and motored in.

It was a great start for Jane and crew to meet and to shake out a few new items
for the Caribbean. Before Jane left Monday we went over a lot of the provisioning with questions like ...Trivia #1 How many sheets of toilet paper does someone need for a ten day trip to the Caribbean on the Carib1500?...your guess is as good as mine.

So much for Dover, as you read this the new Spectra300 watermaker is going in and I am finishing off installing a beautiful new stainless steel holding tank....if something like this can be beautiful......So much for now. Cap Jim