Early start to 2021 season

[svscott]

I took my 87 26D out sailing for a few hours this afternoon. I'm pretty sure this is the earliest I've ever gotten the boat out and it was perfect... 60 degrees, sunny, and NE wind at 8 to 13 knots.
Boat setup and launch took about 45 minutes from when we started parking lot prep to when we left the dock with Matt up and sails pre-rigged, ready to hoist. There was only one other sailboat and a small handful of fishing boats on Presque Isle Bay.
We sailed a full lap around the bay in about 3 hours using full mainsail and 109 jib. Everything went as expected - the rig was spot on, engine behaved great, and the auto tiller, gps, and other electrics were good.
After the lap around the bay, we sailed sailed through the tight marina channel and then docked at a random boat slip at the (currently empty) Presque Isle State Park marina and my friend grabbed his Mavic Mini drone. We went back out for a quick lap around the little basics bay area and got a few super cool drone videos. I'll post videos once they're available to me.
Here are a few pics from this afternoon.

[Jimmyt]

Nice! Thanks for sharing.

[Russ]

So envious. Looks like a great day!!

[Inquisitor]

Fantastic trip!

And certainly post videos...

Sorry to diverge from the beautiful trip. I'm interested in the drone usage. I have the old DJI Tello. Cheap and flies nice. The video sucks! Has no on-board storage... has to send via WiFi to your phone to save. Buddy has the DJI Mavic Air. A little too pricey for all I want. I'd like to hear how using the Mini over water is like. Will it return to the boat by itself... after you've moved from when it left?

[svscott]

Fantastic trip!

And certainly post videos...

Sorry to diverge from the beautiful trip. I'm interested in the drone usage. I have the old DJI Tello. Cheap and flies nice. The video sucks! Has no on-board storage... has to send via WiFi to your phone to save. Buddy has the DJI Mavic Air. A little too pricey for all I want. I'd like to hear how using the Mini over water is like. Will it return to the boat by itself... after you've moved from when it left?

I will follow up with videos soon. My buddy, Chris has them on his phone and I can't get the high quality video file until he returns home to his computer and has time to send them. The DJI Mavic Mini seems really easy to fly. I don't know purchase price but it's refurbished. We actually docked the boat in an empty slip and he left the drone behind to take off from the main walkway of the dock. The software does have a return to the takeoff function that we used but when it got close, he opted to land it himself. Chris only got the drone a couple weeks ago and this was his first time flying over water, but it went great. He had to fully focus on flying while I single handed the boat. He landed the drone back on the vacant dock then retrieved it fifteen minutes later after we docked the boat at the launch ramp a few hundred yards away.

Here are a couple screenshots from one clip.