Freedom Cruise I

Colorful Chute

We had a nice sail on Sunday in variable to good sailing conditions. We left around 0815 and motored for the first few hours. As usual, our idea was going to Wai Ling Ding and the Limas afterwards. Luckily, as we were abeam of Lamma, the wind picked up and we were able to unrolling jib and setting the main.  Interestingly… when we came closer to Wai Ling Ding, we heard banging noises…

… some of our crew attributed that to our sails. But knowing the boat very well, I know it wasn’t. The closer we came to WLD the louder it got. As we were around 2NM from the reef, we suddenly saw a water fountain there and, a few seconds later, a heavy bang from an explosion. WTH are the doing. The bombing got louder (they were also setting up explosives on land) and we got the hell out of there – we hadn’t had cell coverage there otherwise I would have checked if there was war. The bombing kept going for a while while we left WLD in our wake.

Making our usual run through one of the Lima gaps, we found ourselves in a fresh off shore breeze and enjoyed sailing under spinnaker.

Up goes the sock...

Now trim the sheets while the sock is up and someone let go the lazy sheet!!

and then cruise...

Then we had to head home. Winds by then have been steady at 8-10 knots, even inshore, just good for a nice sail. We put our asymmetric spinnaker up and were able to fly it as close as 50 AWA, it probably gave us a few cents of a knot advantage over the genoa.

We had some strange red sky with lightnings on just in the bay…

Skipper

Al & Brendan

Later then, we barely then managed to dock before a heavy squall hit us, forcing us to take shelter inside the boat…

PS: Neptune’s still chasing all fish away from us. Or he gives warning to not bite our lures.