What Goes Around Comes Around

What better way to celebrate passing the bar than helping your dad move
the boat down the bay to storage? Her proud dad can't think of any! 

Just about a year after first moving LITHA up to Annapolis from where she was purchased in Deale, we found ourselves retracing her dotted line on the chartplotter back to the same slip we first sailed from as we brought her back to be hauled for winter storage and upgrades.

Shannon was in town, willing and able to assist with what we hoped would be a pleasant day sail given a sunny forecast of 15 knot winds from the west.  We cast off in gusts to 25 and quickly found ourselves in steady winds of 25 with gusts to 30 and an occasional 35 thrown in for effect.

We elected to motor our sloppy way down the bay and into the sun which reflected onto our path and obscured the crab pots in the brightly lit and frothy water as we made a beeline close to shore.  Peeking around the dodger to spot and avoid the pots only resulted in cold slaps of water to the face.
I tried to imagine ourselves in the Caribbean with similarly strong winds, but Shannon reminded me that it would be warmer there and that my comparison was therefore invalid....you can always count on a lawyer to bring you back to reality...

The next day I was joined by Austin for a haul prep day and we were able to remove the forward sails and to winterize the refrigerator and forward deck wash lines.  We also enjoyed a nice lunch in the warm sunshine at Skippers Pier before Austin once again showed how much he loved me by volunteering to crawl in and change the oil filter located on the lower, far side of the motor for me.

With all this great help, LITHA was made ready for haulout and for her winter maintenance to begin.