MayDay at the ferry

Got to the boat late Friday night, put up the food and cleaned up some, readied the beds and made some popcorn for the kids, Jiffy pop is at times entertainment all in its self and we settled in to watch the hunger games.


7am and we were up and having coffee when I realized that I had left water and propane back at the house, so guess what I did for an hour round trip, yep collected the items.  We buddy boated with Alan and Suzanne from Drumroll, after rounding the point we headed towards Picton and were moving along quite well upwind at 4.5 knots. A few hours into the sail winds died down and I made a quick sail change to the number 1 genny and we managed to maintain 4 knots for most of the way.
As we cleared the ferry there was a May Day over the radio and it happened to be a boat just behind us a mile or so, guess he had lost power and felt he was going to get into trouble with the ferry's by sailing through the lane. I spun around and offered assistance to Prescott Coastguard in case he needed a tow. Prescott CG had me on standby as they were in contact with the other vessel. Prescott came back and asked us for size and description and relayed to the other vessel, guess the hunter 36 did not want to be towed by a Grampian 26 because all of a sudden he managed to get his sails up and then changed to a pon pon for a tow to the harbour (Picton). Prescott CG thanked me and then I spun back around and continued to my destination.
All this spinning around and offering to help cost me an hours time and the wind was getting lighter as dinner time approached.
As were sailing up the channel towards haybay we had some wind in our favour and started to skirt along at 4.8 - 5.2 so we started to make some good progress again, rounding the point we saw Drumroll on the hook and Alan called on the cell to say the ceasar's are now being poured and waiting for us.
I dropped the hook and we rafted up, had a sundowner handed to us and relaxing began in full force.
Matt decided to do some swimming, bentley had to be rowed to shore to take care of business.
Dinner was roasted peppers with zucchini in a balsamic vinegar, Mrs Dash original and a touch of evoo, jerk  spice on the chicken and shrimp with garlic roasted potatoes. A nice wine with dinner and it was a feast to be remembered.
We laughed and chatted late into the evening and crashed around 11 pm.
Coffee was served at 8:30 in the morning and then we headed back to home. The sail was fantastic, 15 - 20knts wind out of the west, this gave me a chance to try out that new reef I had put into the main. If you didn't know Grampians have the roller reefing boom which does not work very well and you can't have a vang this way. Slab reefing is so much faster and efficient, and it worked awesome, with our avg speed at 5.8 we were home in a few hours.
A clean up and remove some items left us heading to the house with a fairly full load and feeling happy about the weekend of great fun, food and a sail that matched.