After a night spent in the proverbial "cheap motel", Hans and I enjoyed a simple breakfast at Gordon's on the main street where the cook was wearing a memorable T-shirt with old-style lettering that read: Manure occureth. Both of us decided to travel a lot lighter for this year's cruise, in light of weather forecasts that indicated warm sunny weather to be a virtual certainty until at least Saturday night. Instead of taking my heavy red duffel bag and its week's worth of every type of clothing, I stuffed my small Rock Hall tote bag with three T-shirts, a spare bathing suit plus some M&M's and was set to travel. My wet gear would have to do if inclement weather should arrive unexpectedly.

Back at the marina, our flotilla was preparing to set out on a perfect sailing day of 80F and winds of 5 to 10 knots. Dick had assessed the winds as being a possible port-tack fetch to Tangier, an opportunity not to be missed since the prevailing SW winds almost always make the sail to Tangier a beat, be it from Crisfield or Smith Island. So, having synchronized our watches and promised to do a VHF radio check-in each hour on the hour ...

... we set off. Radio contact was spotty but Uncle Al did proudly manage his first-ever VHF call though Dick thought he was talking to Richard not Al. Hans and I began to understand why the battle fleets of yesteryear had such a complete system of flag signals when it became apparent that we would be a good 30° short of laying Tangier, and Dick tried to communicate our new destination of ...

André soon came over and got the news. While it's not obvious at first glance, note the bend still in the W3098 mast after the previous day's adventure. Excessive bend results in telltale creases across the mainsail from the area of overbend towards the clew, a classic example of which can ...

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