Sailing Blew Bayou

Our first sail was an adventure. My mother-in-law ans brother-in-law came along for the ride, and we headed out to the bay. The motor did great on the hour motor out to open water, although I was on pins and needles watching the guages - finally relieved to raise the mainsail and kill the motor.

The sail was great! We stayed out a little later then anticipated, and came back into Clear Lake under darkness. This was fine, until we got to our end - where the channel markers were unmarked.

I never worried much about the motor on my sailboats, but our current slip is less then optimal. Where I could have sailed back into my previous marina, the boat's current location is a mile up a narrow inlet directly upwind. Before even reaching our inlet, the navigable water is narrow and (as mentioned earlier) unmarked at night. Which is why we ran aground...

We managed to escape the shoals later, but in the process of revving the motor - we lost a lot of oil into the bilge. I'm not certain what caused this, I'm guessing a bad oil-sending unit - but I'll look at this next weekend.