Had a great day of sailing on the Chesapeake Bay for the Screwpile Lighthouse Regatta! I was crew on a friends boat J105 'Rakali'. J105. Winds were light for the 1st two races, but built to a nice breeze for the last race of day 1. This is us returning back to Solomon's Island after racing... The wind was great and we hit 10Kts under spinnaker off the wind. Nearby boats are Tripp 26 'Goin'', Olson 29 'Natural Disaster', and Melges 24 'Danger Paws' with Antrim 27 'Ultra Violet' further up ahead. See the race results here: https://yachtscoring.com/event_results_cumulative.cfm?eID=3027 We had a poor 1st race in the very light air and ended up performing a 'man overboard exercise' to retrieve a piece of electronics gear that flew overboard during a spinnaker hoist. Fortunately, it floated! Last race of the day we managed to pull a gun. We'll see how day 2 goes. :)
Spent a little time this holiday weekend trying out my new Zpacks Duplex Tent while doing a quick section of the Appalachian Trail in Shenandoah National Park Virginia. This time, I hiked from Elkwallow Wayside to Pass Mountain Hut. Along with being hot, sweaty, and buggy, this section of trail was exceptionally boring for me, with few views and little features of interest. Now I know where the nickname "Green Tunnel" comes form. That being said, I did see two bears and a pretty tame deer. Hiking from north to south along this section of trail, there is a spring about 0.5 miles south of the wayside. Once up on the ridge, there are a couple nice tent sites, one about 1.6 miles and the other at 1.9 miles south. There is a very good spring 4.8 miles south of Elkwallow (~2.4 miles north of Pass Mountain Hut) with a tent site right nearby (just south of the spring). These are all what I would consider legal stealth sites in SNP, being far enough away from trail, water, roads, and structures. Pass Mountain Hut is typical for the park and the site hosts a spring, privy, bear box, and bear pole near the tenting area. There are two tenting areas. I used the one behind the Hut on the other side of the very good spring.
