Century Club: mike pitchford

Our little Key West came in hands this week. Late Tuesday evening I learned a friend was sailing his classic racing sailboat back from the South River alone. He ran into rigging trouble (it was fresh from winter work). He had called for a tow from Boat US bit I headed out just in case. With Thomas Point in sight I called and learned that BoatUS has indeed showed up and had him almost back to his departure marina.

Armed with that news I turned around and headed home. It was getting dark and it was also a bit sporty (one to two foot waves in the open Bay). It would have been a long tow at six knots in rough waters.

The next day i took the Key West down the creek to help a friend with his boat. His SureShade was racked and we attempted to fix it. Besides being racked it seems to have a bad motor so our efforts were to no avail.

The very next day I got the chance to tow my friend and his classic boat home from the South River in much calmer waters.

Early June can be hard to predict, weather wise. Sometimes it is full on summer and sometimes nice. The Canadian wildfire smoke added complexity to our planned club cruise to Harness Creek.

As it turned out we had a great weekend! the bad air from the wildfires lifted after a particularly bad Thursday. The overnight temps stayed in the 60s, making for nice AC free sleeping. The cruise leader, Koralina McKenna applied her creative "teacher" skills to a three stop rotational happy hour and dinner among three boats. As they say: "a good time was had by all".

Just back from the ICW north trip, we had our house rented during USNA Commissioning Week.  We have done this for years and, as ususal, we had a plan to stay aboard the boat in downtown Annapolis.  It is a great week to be in Annapolis.  There are lots of people and lots going on, including the Blue Angels practive day and performance day.  It never gets old!

It has been warming up in south Florida. In January and February there are occasional winter days when we "snowbirds" may put on a long sleeve t-shirt. They are the same days that the locals sport sweatshirt hoodies. Those days are fewer in March and essentially gone by April.

Also gone or going in April are some of our fellow live aboard snowbirds. The marina is less full as the month progresses. Some have found a window and headed to the Bahamas. Some have started a leisurely trip north. Some have put their winter home up for the summer in local yards and headed to their northern home, many with another cruising boat!

We are leaving our boat in town but flying home. In early May we will return to begin a projected 12 day trip up the ICW to the Bay.

Living aboard this winter has been great fun. Living in a small space is a challenge, for sure. I wrote about some of these challenged in the May issue of PropTalk. We will do it again (and keep working to improve our storage, etc to meet the small boat living challenges).