We’ve been out sailing on Astraea at least once a weekend for the past few weeks. We’re really comfortable taking the boat in and out by ourselves but it makes it nice to go out with other people, or have a destination for our sailing trips instead of just going out and cruising the bay. Friday we went out for a quick sail with Atmun and Justin, some guys I know from work.

Saturday we took Astraea across the bay to Trent and Brittany’s house. Since the first time we went to their house I said we should take our boat over and dinghy ashore. We finally did it a year later.

We didn’t spend the night because anchoring isn’t authorized overnight. As we took the dinghy back to Astraea the San Diego Police boat was pulling up towards us to check if we were doing OK. We said, “No problem, just took a little longer to get underway than expected.” They left us alone to go back to Pier 32.

The next day we hung out with Eric from  Coconutz.

Then we had some tasty Mexican food at Miguels in Point Loma and came back to the boat to play. We took Astraea out and flew our new drifter for the first time. The drifter is a giant sail made of lightweight material and it’s used for sailing downwind off the roller furler like a jib.

It’ll take more experimenting with the drifter to find the best way to sail and trim it. We were cruising along at 5 knots with just the drifter up. If we’d also have had the mainsail up I’m sure we’d be making 7.2 knots, hull speed. Thanks to Eric for helping manhandle this gigantic sail.

I’ll be getting back to work on boat projects later, it’s been great to just hang out with friends and not worry about working on the boat for a while. As the weather stays nice I’ll get back to projects.