Porter Bay

Lake Champlain
(09/10/05) I'm sure you've heard the line about hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. I have to tell you an old story about Porter Bay that relates to the moments of terror part.

It was around 1980 and I was sailing with my father, Walt Novinger, and my oldest son John. We were sailing south on Lake Champlain with a north wind behind us. We had the mainsail, a genoa job and the spinnaker up. The wind had increased until it was far too strong for the spinnaker. Nevertheless, I was afraid to try to take it down. There was too much risk of losing control. My plan was to sail us into Porter Bay. There we could sail behind a headland that would shelter us from the wind and take down the sails in peace.

We stormed into Porter Bay at a breakneck speed. I had the helm. Walt would douse the jib and spinnaker. My dad would bag the spinnaker. I rounded behind the headland, and down came the sails. So far so good, but we weren't in to the bay far enough to avoid wind eddies. Start a 30-second timer.

Suddenly a powerful wind eddy, blew at us from the south; a 180-degree shift. It was blowing us right toward the rocks on shore! Worse, the wind had filled the spinnaker in my dad's arms. It filled with wind pulling harder and harder until I feared that it would lift him right off the deck. I had no steerage control

The solution was to use the outboard motor to turn us around. I started it but it stalled immediately. I looked back and I could see that the fuel line had broken. The rubber hose was cracked open just where it fit onto the nipple on the motor. Fortunately, this happened once before so I knew just what to do. I grabbed my trusty Mora knife from my belt. (I always wore a knife on the boat). I cut off the last inch of rubber hose, threw it away, plugged the remaining hose back onto the fuel nipple, started the engine, and spun us around 180 degrees, just missing the rocks by feet. At the same time, the rogue wind stopped and we were left in still air and blissful quiet. I realized that the others never realized all that was happening. End the 30-second timer.

That night I related the story of what really happened. We all laughed and visualized my dad disappearing into the sky holding on to that spinnaker. We called him Super Chicken III, a reference to a NFL Super Bowl mascot.

They say that emotional moments are burned firmly into our memory so that we remember them vividly. In this case it is very true. Today as Libby and I headed for Porter Bay I could relive every second of that day in my mind.