Forecast: Rowing with a Chance of Sailing

Yesterday I got out for an extended row/sail to Ganges in the Paper Tiger. Not an R2AK Style Day, but 6 hours of rowing and a bit of sailing in 5 Celcius dry air, with a nice warm home-cooked meal to return to.

It was three hours over to Ganges from Montague. The lesson for the outbound leg was this:

Rowing with waves on the beam with little wind isn't fun. The boat's roll means that your oars can miss
when you expect them to hit and vice versa. I was getting the hang of it a bit better as time went on, but it was nice to catch
the shelter of Salt Spring when I got there. The wind itself was dwindling from 10 knots, but left the Trinc's fetch of
about 10 nm providing a few test waves. The switch to pedal drive is more tempting than ever now.

A secondary mission for today’s trip was to check out the Robotics Competition at the highschool, where a pair of Galiano’s budding scientists were having a go. It was a fun thing to actually arrive at, but time and tide wait for no one, and after a short spell ashore it was back out on the water.

I rowed out of Ganges and raised the sails for the only time that day. It was a nice downwind run for about a half hour, but then came the return leg’s lesson (a reminder from Adventure 1 last September):

Even when there's a tempting bit of breeze, rowing is faster than sailing.

The real lesson here is that I need to work on the transitions between rowing and sailing, and even eliminate the transitions
altogether so that I can row and sail at the same time. Why? Because putting effort into sailing at crucial moments means you can
easily loose a 1/2 hour, and 1/2 hour delays can put you on a tidal treadmill instead of arriving at an open gate.

Another lesson from today’s return leg:

You can wear clothes OVER TOP of a dry suit. Who knew?! ;-)

This was one of those lessons that only shows up when 'opportunity' necessity mothers you. It might not sound like a big deal,
but after an hour of sailing with no rowing I found that my flimsy T-shirt and long johns weren't enough in the 5 Celcius air, 
(and it was rain and spray free at that!). But I did have my shore clothes and found that an exterior wrap helped cut the
breeze induced chill.

The main point here is that I'd always thought of the drysuit as restricting me in terms of what I'd have on for some
long extended time. That sucks when you'll experience a variety of conditions. Now I'll be including options like foul weather gear 
OVER TOP of the drysuit. That'll help with body temperature management on a multimodal day.