Day Two Solo

Hey, just what I needed more things to write about. Who knew “May your life be full of stories” was a curse?
Anyway. I woke up around three thirty and dumped my porta-potty at the park bathhouse, which wasn’t wholly unpleasant. Just mostly.
At 9 am I decided I’d spent enough time here, and that I should go on to Cape Vincent for an ATM and a Laundromat. When I pulled away from the dock there was a little breeze helping me along out of Long Bay. When I got into Chaumont bay there was a good breeze, but nothing I couldn’t handle. By the time I got half way down the Island the waves were at least three feet and the wind twenty knots at least. When it gusted to thirty and I couldn’t tack I decided that today was a bad day to be out, and as I turned around I watched in amazement as the knot meter rose from 2 to 4, to 6, and leveled off at around six and a quarter knots… Hull speed… It was a hairy ride from there back to the park, but it was not over yet. I still had to dock. I dropped sail in the lee of some trees and just as I motored past them the wind hit again, heeling the boat almost five degrees with no sail up whatsoever. When I finally reached the dock I put Jackson in neutral, letting the boat coast in, being slowed by the wind, but the wind was too much and I had to goose the throttle. And As I did so Cassandra’s bow banged into the rub strip on the dock’s edge. Nothing was damaged. As I brought her alongside I stepped off with a bow and stern line to hold her. As I bent down to tie off the bow line the wind gusted, blowing the bow away. Then it caught the stern. So there I am leaning with all my weight against these ropes, straining to keep my boat from blowing away. And as soon as the bow line went slack I wrapped it over a cleat and began hauling the stern in. After five minutes of wrestling with it Cassandra was tied off and Jackson sat on her stern purring softly. Well, at least I got one thing fixed…
… in time to break another.
I was tired of having water drip on my chest every night it rains. And since I’ve caulked the daylights out of the portlight, it can’t be leaking. So, the next obvious cause is the handrail. Which I decided to rebed last night at seven thirty or so. So, I get the thing off, scrub the deck where it was growing moss and mildew, and go to put it back on, only to realize that the bolts were cut when it was first installed, so I can’t get the nuts to thread back on. Long story short, I manage to break the thing in half trying to fix it. By ten thirty I finally have it all back together, rebedded, and epoxied where I broke it. It’s supposed to rain tonight, so I’ll know if it worked soon enough.