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Melissa & Dave - Adventures at Sea

Jim and Melissa try to fly the spinnaker

Today we decided we would head for a protected anchorage at Isla Casaya.  As it was only a hour and half away, and we had all day, Wanuskewin decided to put up their spinnaker.  Not to be outdone, we figured we would put ours up too.  It should tell you something that Wanuskewin had never seen it.  Suffice it to say that getting it deployed wasn't trivial.  We did pretty much everything wrong.  And everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.  Starting with the fact that the sail had been stored in the trunk with something - probably a stray piece of cardboard that had completely rotted.  So as Dave pulled out the sail, he had to scrape the slime off the sail.  Then Melissa dragged the sail up forward, completely sliming the port side decks.  This is the deck we use to collect water when it rains.  Doh!  So after we finally got the sail deployed, Melissa spent a half hour scrubbing the deck to get it clean enough to again collect water if we were lucky enough to get some rain.

The biggest issue was that we managed to deploy the sail wrapped around the furled jib.  Jim and Melissa tried to get it unwrapped while Dave looked on.  Probably laughing.  But quietly so we couldn't hear him.

But no luck.  Eventually we had to pull the sock back down and beg for captain Dave's help.

And then finally Melissa was able to pull the sock free. 

And then Voila!  We were sailing under the spinnaker.

Once we did get both spinnakers up, Melissa figured she would go take some artistic photos of both boats.

Alas to get this shot, she had to make Dave move out of the way.  And Jim, who was shooting behind her, actually wanted Dave in the shot.  Oh well.

Coming into the anchorage was tricky because it was shallow and surrounded by reefs.  At one point Dave saw rocks in front of us and stopped to call Wanuskewin and report a reef not on our computerized charts.  Yeah, says Mike, the only place the real info exists is in the paper charts in the guide book.  The ones marked "not for navigation".  Dave pulls out the guide book, and sure enough, there is the most accurate chart.  Warning label not withstanding.  We made it into the anchorage safe and sound.

There is a tiny little town here and we launched the dingy to go explore.  It took about 10 minutes to walk all around the town.  There was a tiny little store that had sardines and hot sauce and not a lot else.  No cold beers.  So we headed back for the boat.

We had dinner aboard Wanuskewin.  Probably our last dinner aboard as they are headed west and we are headed east.  We tried not to think about that.

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