Sailors Die For Days Like This

The Gut
44 45.45 N 073 17.97 W

The sky is partly sunny.  The temperature is in the mid 70s.  Winds are from the south at 20-25 knots.   It is a Sunday afternoon.  These are the kind of conditions that sailors would die for.   For many of them, stuck in the wrong places, the whole summer can go by without a single day like this.

As you might expect, the maximal number of boats are out on the lake.  However, Lake Champlain is very big.  No matter how many boats are sailing, we never feel crowded.  

The Canadians are here in great numbers now.  A week ago I wrote that they seemed to be strangely missing from the lake.  I spoke too soon.

Anyhow, we had a great sail today from Burlington, 30 miles up here to The Gut.   The Gut is a marvelously sheltered anchorage, but shallow and choked with weeds.  We don't care about weeds as long as we anchor with Big Bessie.  The advantage is that we have this whole anchorage to ourselves, whereas the other popular anchored are crowded to capacity tonight.  :)

Yesterday, we met with my former boss and mentor, Paul, at the camp of Paul's son Bob.   It was great.  Paul is just 85 years old now, and his mind is still fertile and productive.  He just completed a sophisticated simulation of some phenomona that nobody ever modeled before.  He did it on an old 486 computer with Quick Basic.  Paul says that his computer has never been connected to The Internet.  That makes it immune to viruses. And the old PC, with Basic still executed his simulations in less than 2 seconds.  There would be no benefit to anything faster.

Tomorrow we sail to Chazy Landing to visit Libby's cousin Jane.  Jane is one of the very few blood relatives that Libby has remaining.  It will be a special treat to see her.

This morning I bought an overhaul kit for our Wilcox Crittenden Skipper Head.  I'll do the overhaul as soon as I can.  We must be in a place where we can reach some other toilet to use while our head is out of commission for overhaul.  West Marine's price for that Kit is up nearly 100% in 5 years.  That frosts me.  The only consolation is that they will match prices from elsewhere on the Internet without hassle.  I used price match to get them to knock off 30%.

OK, let me see if I can post this blog.  We are at the very fringe of signal strength to contact the Internet.