Sailing away...

Any trip to FL would not be complete, for me at least, without a trip out on the water under the power of nothing but the wind. And... I got to do just that the other day with pops. My folks in Indian Harbour Beach, FL live on a great canal overlooking a marina and the mouth of the Banana River. What that means is that they also have a dock with a sailboat that we can take right out into the Indian River (which is really just the space between the barrier islands and the mainland of Florida) which is 3/4 miles or more wide and very very long and also great for sailing.
Pops has been fixing up his little boat, a 1983 Commodore 26 which was the last year in a series of years the boat was produced from a hull design originally created by Columbia. It is a solid little lady and I quote:
"... an exptionally roomy and stable cruiser with the capability of going almost anywhere on coastal waters, lake or highway." The boat has "a true shoal draft of 25 inches."
specs:
LOA 25'-10"
LWL 22'-10"
Beam 7'-11"
Draft 2'-1"
Displacement 4400 lbs
Ballast 1400 lbs
Sail Area 288 sq. ft.
This boat actually performs quite well due to the rather long keel. She slide a bit and does not point as high as many of her contemporaries, but man, not much else competes with the water tightness (no silly dagger board to content with), seaworthy characteristic plus the ability to practically drive her right up to the beach, throw the anchor out on the sand and call it a day.
We decided to head out in relatively light winds blowing 10 knots and hoped it would pick up more as the wind moved around from East to South, allowing us to just cruise back and forth across the river practically on a beam reach. Well, we quickly realized the weather was not going to cooperate!
What we did instead, which actually ended up being quite fun, was spend the rest of the afternoon figuring out how we were going to avoid the individual storms rolling in from the west. First we high tailed it across the river to avoid rain to the north that was rolling in more like a sun shower then took a nice 4 knot cruise downwind (north) to avoid the big storm coming in from the west. We eventually ran out of water and the beat back south but doing our best to keep clear of the little squalls and ended up only putting our foul weather jackets on for about 5 minutes. Mission accomplished!
The last 1/3 was spend pleasantly tacking up the river towards home, enjoying the cooler weather brought by the passing storms.
Another great day in FL!