I decided that Sugar Creek was too small, even though we had the room to sail for hours, Long Branch is much larger with more opportunities to play.

We load up and head that way. It’s a busy day at the lake with lots of boaters out there.

The boat ramp is much nicer here and we get our sailboat in the water with little trouble. No need to worry about the no wake area either, as if we could leave a wake that would disturb others.

Once out of the small inlet we head out to the open lake and raise the jib, it’s a little windy but we have confidence in our abilities at this point.

You ever hear the saying of, it’s better to be down here wishing you was up there, than up there wishing you was down here? Well, the start of the day was like that.

We got about a quarter mile down the lake and a motor boat moves from behind us, crossing from starboard to port, then they shut it down right not more than 20 feet in front of us. We’re actually making good speed at this point, and my instinct was to immediately move the tiller and head to port to avoid a collision.

That was a great idea, except for one thing. The wind. We heeled over so hard the side of the boat was a foot under water and we were turning on a dime. The picture wasn’t pretty. We ended up doing a 360, right back where we started from. Well, you can’t say I don’t learn from my mistakes. This time I turned while watching what I was doing with the sail.

I’ll bet those people in that power boat got a kick out of seeing us doing a circle like that. I wasn’t happy, and I guarantee Melanie wasn’t happy. We had a discussion about not being ready for the big lake. Then we lowered the jib and continued on.

After things cooled off, and she had time to dry out a bit, I did say she was half way under water didn’t I? Well, she was.  Not me though, I was on the high side again. We raised the jib again and this time without that other boater out there we managed to have a good time.

Except, the end, the wind died off completely and we had to row 1/2 a mile back to where we started from.

Later I’ll post some things I’ve learned.