May | 2013 | Sailing Journey

memorial day weekend was pretty busy for us! thankfully, i had an obligation on saturday so no long-long weekend with journey. i say thankfully because we were experiencing pretty gusty conditions and i know jr would have dragged me out! i am trying to set myself up for happy and positive experiences on journey and i’m not quite ready for 30 knot gusts!

anyways… we went to the boat on sunday morning and planned on spending the night. we also brought leo again (second weekend in a row, woohoo!) and decided to take his little adventure one step further and sail with him! eek! we settled in and and took care of a few housekeeping items before we started the motor.

we turned the motor on and went about our business putting sail covers away, pulling out the boat hook, and tidying up the cabin so stuff didn’t go flying! we tried to pretend that the noise of the motor was no big deal, hoping leo would take his cues from us. peeping in at him now and again, he didn’t seem bothered by the motor. score. even once we let go of the dock lines and started moving, leo was cool as a cucumber! he HATES the truck and is so nervous, eyes wide and ears tucked back, every time he takes a ride. we were worried that the forward movement of the boat would freak him out as well. nope, he was just fine.

ok, one more hurdle to jump: sailing! the wind was outta the west-ish, so we wanted to sail out of rock creek, downwind. it was still a bit gusty so we decided to reef, partly because we wanted to be cautious, partly because we had never reefed journey before (NOT because we’re sissies, ed!). i hopped on deck to do what i do and we were outta there, headed south out of the patapsco river towards our beautiful chesapeake bay. this point of sail was gorgeous! we were moving fast and heeling comfortably, jake clocked us at 8 knots! who knows how accurate that is, but it felt pretty cool! it was about this time when i remembered, “leo!” i peeped down below and this is what i saw:

leo, chillin’, under sail!

he was just fine! sleepy, even! he seemed unfazed. i couldn’t beleive it. i truly couldn’t get over how comfortable he was. he moved from spot to spot, showing no sign of discomfort. exhale… ahhhhhh… he even peeped out of the cabin for a bit and made a short cameo appearance in the cockpit! although we didn’t want to discourage his curiosity in the cockpit, we weren’t 100% comfortable with him out there, so after a minute, we gently coaxed him back down. he obliged.

leo checking things out under sail.

i’m so happy about leo’s reaction to sailing. i really had written the whole thing off. i totally assumed sailing, motoring, docking, anchoring, all of it, would be too stressful for my baby lee. but he surprised me in the best way ever. so there’s hope that leo will become a cruising kitty soon enough. we’re still not making any decisions, but our kitty was a very good sport this memeorial day weekend. here are a few more pics of leo’s memorial day adventure. enjoy!