Sailing log: Jan 6 2008

A couple of days ago (as early as Wednesday maybe?) I saw the following forecast for today on NOAA: Mostly sunny, with a high near 64. Southwest wind around 8 mph. When you see a high of 64 in January, with a gentle breeze to boot, that (to me) can only mean one thing: sailing! Saturday they had forecast only about a 5 mph breeze and almost 10 degrees colder if memory serves. So I knew we should wait till today, and I wasn't mistaken: an awesome day on Lake Keowee.

Yesterday we went down to Anderson to do more shopping. Those after-Christmas sales are still on and we managed to cash in on several good deals. Corey picked up three pairs of jeans for about $20 a piece, while I snagged 4 business-casual dress shirts for about $15 a pop and a blazer for $60! Those are pretty good deals. But all day long I thought about sailing today. And I wasn't the only one.

Once we got out on the lake today (about 13:36) we had to avoid a bunch of racers already there. We moved our sailboat to Lake Keowee just last summer so this was really only our second time out on this lake under sail. It's much closer to home (about a 5-10 minute drive vs. about 45 minutes to Big Water Marina on Lake Hartwell where we had the boat last), but it's a much smaller sail area, and, because of the sailing club that we belong to, much more traffic. So...it was set sail and tack, tack, tack, to get out of the way of the racers.

We have a shallow keel boat so theoretically we can get in closer to the shore than the full keel boats, but still, even when we're skirting the shore to get out of their way we don't want to get too close. Finally, however, we got past the race course the club had set up, and shot the gap between two small islands. And so discovered Keowee's "big water" for us for the moment. It's not as big as Hartwell's big water, but on the other hand we get nicer views of the Blue Ridge mountains. And then it was time to put to shore. Our slip is at the far end of the Keowee Sailing Club marina, but that's ok with us. We just have to walk along the gangway a little farther, but then we have a fairly nice exit and entry into our slip. And being so close to home we still had time to enjoy the sunset on our own (swamped) dock with the cats.