Day 233, Feb 10, Monday- Back to Georgetown

We debated whether to head south again, but the winds are favourable albeit forecasted to be a bit light, and it sounds like lots of people we want to say hello to are making their way to Georgetown so we up anchor and head out by 9:00.

It takes almost an hour by the time we are out of the cut, and the winds seem to be reasonable for sailing with just the jib and main.  Dawson puts out the fishing line as we are hoping to catch our next fish.  We figured the first fish cost about $400 in fishing gear and bait etc. so another fish would really help our price averaging.

We motor sail for about 30 minutes to charge the batteries, but then the engine is shut down and we are sailing a lovely 5-6 knots an hour (nautical mile=1.15 statute miles).  We sail for a couple of hours and it is getting quite hot.  Julie does her French lessons, Dawson sends emails, we have lunch.... and still no fish on our hook.  The wind turns a bit and we put the engine on again with the sails up.  There are around 30 boats all heading the same direction into Georgetown.  We hear some familiar names on the radio and look forward to saying hello to people we had met months ago in the Erie Canal.

By 2:00 we are pulling in the fishing line as we are turning into the cut where we will anchor.  Turns out something took our bait, so technically we may not have been fishing for much of the trip.  We decide to anchor at Hamburger beach as it has better shelter than Volleyball beach.  We are nicely anchored by 3:00 and going for the long swim to shore.  It is about 800 feet to shore, so round trip was 1/3 of a mile.  A nice bit of exercise.  We rush back from our swim a bit so the cardio system was working.  Happy hour is on the beach at 4:00 and people were starting to gather. 

Back on shore, there are about 80 people gathered for happy hour.  We again meet up with Blue Moon from the Abacos, and Saltine who we have not seen since early in the Erie Canal about September 18^th.  We also meet up with Oriel, and Meridian which are 2 other boats from our trapped on the Erie Canal days.  Happy hour lasts until the happy mosquitoes come out for feeding at around 6:30.  This is the first time we have experienced bugs.  Julie got quite eaten up.  We race back to the boat after Julie drops her sunglasses in the water and Dawson kindly dons his executive swim suit and dives for them.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson