Skipper Alex

Sunday – today we decided to try one of our favorite anchorages (there are many and just about all that we anchored in) – Long Point Cove. We figured that the anchorage might be a bit busy with it still being the weekend and July, but to our surprise, only 4 boats were at anchor and 3 of those boats (trawlers) were rafted together.

Today, Alex drove the boat from start to (almost) finish. He started the boat, pulled up anchor, navigated out of the anchorage (tight in areas) and navigated via the laptop to our next anchorage – he did a great job and has most of the boat stuff down pat. I’ve started to teach him how to turn the boat in the boats own length – using the back and fill method. Once he gets that down then we’ll have him practice bringing the boat into a slip or wall. I’m sure by next year he’ll be able to completely operate the boat including docking. He’ll be a master at the single screw docking before he has his drivers license.

After we set anchor we headed out for a quick dinghy exploring around the anchorage. After a bit, we decided to head back to the boat to batten down the hatches for a storm quickly approaching from the West. Even though we are in a completely protected anchorage (rocks/hills on all sides), we still need to maximize the anchor chain rode and close up the boat. The storm came through with some moderate winds and heavy rain. We stayed on the end of our anchor without problems, but a sailboat in the anchorage began to drag. They continued to drag until they were about to hit the sailboat behind them. At that time, they finally decided they would need to do something about it and threw out fenders before they came up to the other sailboat. Thankfully, they were not in front of us – so we could stay dry and out of the lightening. Our first storm on anchor was not a problem.