Night Sail

Well, one main item stopped us from sailing at night from a practical standpoint — our lack of reliable navigational lights.  The wiring’s a mess on Waterloo and it’s one of the larger projects we hope to tackle over the off-season.  If we solved the wiring, the only thing left holding us back would be fear and inexperience.  October nights get dark pretty quick, so fear / avoidance of the dark seriously inhibits weekday sailing.  Yesterday, we sailed into the dark abyss and returned.

photo credit: John Picken

We learned a number of things:

• The racing main isn’t be best night sail.  It’s trickier to hoist and drop which add a little extra element of danger Justin and I probably didn’t need.  That and it’s gray.  If it not for the nav lights, we were the stealth boat.
• Boat lights closer to shore are tremendously hard to distinguish from the normal clutter of lights in the loop.  Is that a boat or a biker?
• Ditto for channel marking lights — when they exist.  We spent the last half of our sail aiming for the Monroe’s south entrance only to find out when we got there, we had been aiming at traffic lights.  Slipping through the south entrance at night is something we may pass on in the future.

Next week is probably the last week for sailing before we pull Waterloo out for the year. More night adventures to come.