I took a half day of vacation and met up at the marina with my brother, my daughter and her boy friend for the first sail of the season.
Before heading out we stopped at the fuel dock to top off the fuel tank and calibrate the new fuel level system.
Winds were variable to say the least. Before we departed they had dropped to about 4 knots so we got the genoa ready. Once we were out and had put the mainsail up the winds rose to about 15 knots. So, we did a sail change taking down the genoa and put up the work jib. Shortly afterwards the wind dropped again to the 5-6 knot range and once again we did a sail change putting the genoa back up. We sailed with the genoa for the rest of the afternoon.
We all had a great afternoon sailing.
With the lighter winds I decided to try flying my drone off the boat for the first time. It was a bit hair-raising to say the least. Flying on land is not to bad, but off the boat with the wind going one way and me on a moving target (the boat) going another made it a bit more difficult.
Controlling the drone is pretty straight forward. The front of the drone has the camera on it. Push the joystick forward and the drone flies forward, push it to the left and it flies to the left and so on. Once I launched the drone though it took off, being pushed by the wind across the boat, from the starboard side to the port side. I quickly lost orientation and it took a while before I got it properly orientated again. It has red lights on the back end to help you know what its orientation is, but I couldn’t see the color of the light during the bright daylight.
The video from my first drone flight off the boat is quite erratic as I tried to regain orientation.
I did manage to get a couple decent frame grabs from the video though.
