Sailboats Fair and fine# 51 : Read oldest posts first

Last night we lazed around in the cockpit listening to some nice music on a local radio station. The sky is full of stars overhead but there is a city in almost any direction you look. You can see the glow in the sky from each of them. The stars directly overhead are the only ones visible. We heard on the radio there was going to be a shuttle launch in three days which inspired me to gaze at the stars in amazement as sailors have done for thousands of years. I wondered how many and from how many lands and seas they looked up and were nearly over whelmed by the wonder of such a sight.

Well it was a sure thing with a shuttle launching in a few days that we weren't going anywhere until that was seen. I planned to get as close as the law would allow and watch.

Since we had several days we decided to go over to the cape and tour the museum and ride out to the launch pad and see the shuttle. We were very excited about the whole thing so Georgene and I studied the chart book to see how close we could get. We made a decision on an anchorage that would get us close but give us room to drag anchor if a storm moved us. The anchorage was on the east side of the Indian river. Cold fronts and squalls usual come from the west and they would put us on a lee shore if an anchor pulled loose.

We weighed anchor and headed on over there in a light breeze and we ghosted along at about two knots and marveled at how good it felt to not feel we needed to make five or six knots.

We sailed into our chosen anchorage and dropped three hooks. Wolftrap set right in the middle of them. We were in a fairly large body of water and we would be leaving her for for long periods of time during the days. I put down a Danforth to the north west and the plow to the southwest. To the East I put out an old Heshoff yachtsman about 25 lbs.

We were anchored in mud and the yachtsman though it might drag in mud would not let go. So if she moved it would be very, very slowly and the other two would have ample opportunity to pull in again. I felt pretty good about how we were anchored and I expected that the anchorage would be full of boats watching the launching. I hoped everyone else would do a good job anchoring their boats. We put the sail covers on and wrapped lines around them to be sure they couldn't blow free. It's not unusual to get gusts of wind to 70 knots in winter frontal thunderstorms. Feeling secure we took the dingy and headed for shore and a two mile walk to the Museum

We were really excited about going to see the space port. I had worked for years doing work for Nasa and felt I was a part of all this and it a part of me. My part was very small but it was big for in my mind.