Champlain Is Better

Otter Creek
No LL

I wrote a non-blog local article in Vermont in which I said, "No matter what exotic and beautiful place we find ourselves, I keep thinking Champlain it Better." That's a statement I'll stand by. It is so beautiful here. It beats Maine. It beats The Florida Keys, and The Bahamas and The Virgins. It beats the Stockholm Archipelago. It beats Lake George and Sacandaga, Lake Ontario and The Thousand Islands region. I hear that Georgian Bay on Lake Huron could be better but I haven't been there yet.

I know that a lot of our cruising friends think we're bonkers to go to the time, expense, and trouble to get way up here; especially the part about having to take our mast down and back up again. All I can say is they are wrong. It IS worth it.

It's raining again right now as we motor up Otter Creek. How dreary. On the other hand, when it is raining on someone else's head and you can see that from a distance, it is beautiful. In the Florida Keys, and The Virgins, and The Bahamas, and Maine we also get treated to views of local rain squalls from a distance. Here though, we get to see them and also get to watch them interact with nearby mountains and valleys.

Last week, John, Paul and I sat on Valcour and watched a rain squall sitting stalled above Essex Junction Vermont. (See below) It was otherwise a sunny day in all directions except in that one place. The squall sat still and rained on Essex Junction for 4 hours before dying out. It was fun to watch from every vantage point except Essex.


Also last week I saw a cold front pass over the top of a nearby mountain. The mountain peeled off the bottom side of the clouds. In what remained, I could see a definite whorl. The whorl was not tight enough to be a tornado but it could have developed in to one. It was like seeing a cross section of a storm cloud that has been dissected in the laboratory.

Yesterday, Libby and I sailed down the lake in clear air. We could see numerous rain squalls over the Adirondack Mountains in New York. They were so local, that I could see slopes of the same mountain, partly in rain and partly light by bright sunlight. I could which which vantage points in New York where I would have been able to see brilliant rainbows.

Champlain is better.