Day 35: Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Underway: 9:15 am Motor Off: 5:55 pm Miles Traveled: 47 Stayed At: Anchor
First Things First: First free breakfast at a marina.
Mile 96 to Mile 143: After hot showers and a wonderful breakfast of fresh hot cinnamon rolls and coffee (a surprise treat from the marina), we motored out into an amazing day for sailing.
It doesn’t get much better than this. Warm sunshine on a fall day, following breezes, sails up and beautiful scenery moving slowly by on both sides of the river. The wind was so nice we decided to let Boris rest for awhile and were silently cruising on a beam to broad reach up river for a half hour before we decided to douse the sails to get under a lift bridge. Yesterday was cold, clammy and gave us wind on the nose and we couldn’t wait to stop for the day. Today, we don’t want this day to end and only anchor because we run out of daylight. We ended up motor sailing most of the day and actually sailed without assist for over an hour.
At Mile 109 at 11:40 a.m. today we hit a thousand miles of our journey. It seems like we have been doing this forever and yet we are only into our second month. We need to remember to enjoy each day because this adventure will end before we know it like some of our Looper friends whose trips are nearing completion.
After a long, exhilarating and tiring (good tired) day, we anchored with a small motor tug next to Kelly’s Island at Mile 143. This is a deep anchorage and we had to try three times to the anchor to set properly and let Aurora settle in with the current holding us steady all night. We rearranged Aurora by moving some heavier items in the stern lazerette to a storage compartment in the bow to try to balance our load out a little. When Boris is pushing us up-current, the stern digs in too much creating a lot of drag. Hopefully this will help. We also removed a half dozen 2-liter bottles of water from home that we will enjoy over the next several days – Cindy really likes Mound water. Mike likes the idea that we are going to get rid of 50 pounds of excess weight. Someday we may even see Aurora’s waterline again.
After a dinner of leftover rotisserie chicken, rice and corn, we cleaned up and relaxed after a great day on the river. Just before going to bed we went out in the cockpit and stood in awe as the milky way arched over our heads surrounded by more stars than we have seen in a long time. What a way to end a top ten day on our Great Loop adventure.
