Tuesday:  To much going on.  We headed back to the cape in the late morning.  I stopped for groceries on the way.  Once I was set up in the house, the wind was too strong for rowing.  Whitecaps all over the bay.  I went for a walk instead.

Wednesday:  Lots of projects.  Furniture getting delivered.  Buying lumber and hardware and digging post holes to put up a clothesline.  I was hoping to go for a row in the afternoon, but it was still quite windy, sustained winds between 15 and 20mph with gusts to 25.

Thursday:  Weather report indicated lighter winds in the morning so I got up round 7:30 and headed out around 8:30.  I’ve decided that it is impractical to carry the boat own the stairs.  They are too steep and rickety, so I threw the boat on top of my car and headed off to a place by the beach that I could park.

The beach is not steep at all, so I had to carry my oars out to the water’s edge and then go back and get my boat.  This round trip took about 5 minutes or so.  In that time, the tide had come in enough to float my oars. I got myself setup in the boat and rowed out to deeper water.  I was touching my oars to the sand with just about each stroke at first but within 5 strokes, I was free and clear.

The goal for today was to get used to rowing this boat in open water.  It will take a while to get used to rowing in waves.  Each direction relative to the waves brought unique challenges.  From some respects, rowing right into the wind was the easiest.  It was also the most taxing.  Waves coming on the quarter bow or stern tended to really throw the boat around.  From the side, the main challenge was to get both oars firmly set at the catch.  Straight downwind was kind of fun.  It seems to work best if you adjust stroke rate to match the wave frequency and take a stroke at the crest of a wave and surf down on the recovery.

Thursday the wind was from the southwest.  It was blowing pretty good when I first started at 8:30, but died down a bit as I went along.  This wind direction is generally unprotected, so the waves get bigger.  I think they were maybe 8″ to 12″ high with some bigger ones.

I was out for an hour and 15 minutes and covered about 16km.  All UT2 / UT1.