Sometimes the sea speaks louder than words, and that was the case with a serenity sail for three couples. Four people were visitors on vacation and two were locals.
We saw the last of the osprey as they have taught their fledglings to fly. Next stop is South America. Soon the Coast Guard will come around to take their nests down from the channel day marks. We discussed how eagles and osprey don’t play well. One fellow said, “I hit a golf ball into a tree and an eagle flew out. So I like to tell people that I shot an eagle.”
We saw around ten dolphins at the entrance to Wormley Creek, which is undergoing dredging. It was unusual to see them in only ten feet of water, and we couldn’t get too close or risked running aground.
Two Coast Guard boats went through maneuvers, but they seemed listless. A Navy patrol boat emerged from the Naval Weapons Station and sped down the York River and over the horizon. There wasn’t another sailboat sloop out there on this brilliant sunny day. The serenity was accompanied by solitude. We could hear the water lapping as the boat cut through the water.
The winds were fluky and stiffened without notice, heeling the boat to 15 degrees and providing veritable propulsion to 8 mph. Paul Maanum recalled his childhood. “Back in Minnesota, my buddy and I took a sailboat on a lake on a windy day. We shot down that lake in a hurry, but it took the rest of the day to get back.”
We spent the rest of the day getting back to nature, soaking in seagulls and loons and puffy clouds over the river. We were all rather speechless.
Let’s Go Sail
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