On Rowing

Burlington, Vermont

42 28.12 N 073 13.35 W

We're spending a few days here anchored in Burlington Harbor. We're in the middle of a 4-day high pressure with no wind. Good time for shore side activities.

Libby and I registered to vote today. Tomorrow, I'm going on a father-daughter kayak trip somewhere in Vermont.

Tonight, I was eating supper when I heard a voice outside. I looked, and saw a man in a dinghy. He said that he just rowed over to admire Tarwathie because her lines were so beautiful. Of course, I don't mind hearing that. Especially on Champlain, one meets many lifelong sailors who have never been near blue water. They tend to admire true cruising boats.

Speaking of rowing. On numerous occasions, I've hosted guests and given them an opportunity to row the dinghy themselves. Surprisingly, to both them and to me, many of them can't accomplish the task very well. It seems only common sense that rowing a boat is something so basic and so simple that nobody should need training or experience to do it. Wrong. I must confess that it is sometimes comical to watch someone to try to do it the first time.

The sign of an expert rower is that he/she maintains a nearly constant speed and a constant course toward the mark. World class rowers can can row a boat against a gale. That's really really hard and very strenuous. I've done it more than once but I'd rather not ever need to do it again.

Why not, you may ask, don't I write a blog about how to row a boat? That would be ridiculous. It would be boring to read, and anything learned would be forgotten before being applied. Reading an instruction book is not the way to learn to row; you learn by just doing it.

Grrrrr

Lake Champlain

44 34.43 N 073 73 24.58 W

The weather yesterday (and today) is wonderful.  Warm, sunny, breezes about 17 knots.  Perfect weather for sailing.  The trouble is that everyone seems to have heard the spendid weather report.   I don't think we've ever seen so many sail boats out on the lake before.   There were far too many to count.  So, what did we decide to do?  Sail of course.

The down side was that we seemed to live under a black cloud of bad luck yesterday.  Everything seemed to go wrong.  One thing after another.   I know that readers like to read about our mistakes and disasters, but this time I'm not inclined to chronicle them.  Grrrrrrrr.  Suffice it to say that at the end of the day, we were glad it was over.

We anchored off the north end of Valcour Island; a place where we never anchored before because it is sheltered in one direction only.   The reason was that every other anchorage at Valcour was packed full with other boats.  Wow were there a lot of boats.  After dark, the numerous masthead anchor lights looked like a swarm of stars.  It appeared that 95% of the boats were Canadian and 95% were sail; a very skewed statistic.  Perhaps this weekend is the end of summer for Canadians; just as Labor Day next week marks the end of summer for many Americans.

The reward for anchoring out so exposed is that we had a front row seat to watch one of those spectacular sunsets as the sun sank behind the Adirondack Mountains.   Oh what glorious colors.  The far clouds glowed in bright gold.  

Burton Walkabout

Burton Island, Vermont
44 46.60 N 073 11.76 W

Libby and I had a nice walkabout of the Burton Island perimeter trail. It is a lovely day. When we camped here with the family, such a walkabout was the high point of every day.

Skipping stones! Endless supply of good skipping stones!

How many freeze-thaw cycles does it take to produce this?

Alien life form? No; look closely.

Surprisingly, most of the camp sites and boat slips are vacant. We're used to this island having 100% occupancy most of the time. Is it the recession? Is is too close to Labor Day? No explanation.

By the way, except for one week in June, our strategy of coming north to avoid the summer heat has worked well. The day and night time temperatures up here are very comfortable without AC or heat. Even the hot week during June wasn't bad at night. We had no trouble sleeping.

This is probably our northernmost extent for the year. I'm fond of saying that our sandbox extends from 25N to 45N. We're almost there at 44 46.60 N, only 13 miles away from the 45th parallel.

See all of our pictures from today here.

Fly Fishing

Burton Island, VT
44 46.60 N 73 11.76 W

We spent last night in Porter Bay. It was another one of those tranquil nights when we could clearly sed and hear everything around us. In the late evening and early morning we were greatly entertained by the leaping fish all around us.

We don't know what species of fish they were but they were big and hungary for insects on the surface. Both Libby and I thought about fly fishing.

I've written before about what terrible fishermen we are. We don't attempt it very often. When we do, we never Icatch anything. We don't carry much equipment either. Certainly not fly rods.

Nice sailing today. We sailed 25 miles north from Porter Bay to Button Island.

Burton Island is the suite of several family camping adventures. It is a state park and a marvelously fun and safe place for kids. We have camped here with all our children and grandchildren (except Bobby), and with my sister Nancy and her family.

The picture shows Tarwathie on a mooring and the Burton Island Ferry to the left. The ferry is the only way for campers to get here. It adds to the charm.

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To Boldly Go ...

Vergennes, Vermont

NoLL

Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689 Magnifies the Dark Universe

Credit: NASA, ESA, E. Jullo (JPL), P. Natarajan (Yale), & J.-P. Kneib (LAM, CNRS)
Acknowledgment: H. Ford and N. Benetiz (JHU), & T. Broadhurst (Tel Aviv)

Ah what a great picture. Each of the fuzzy yellow blobs above is a whole galaxy. The picture reminds me of the desire to explore. To explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before. (Wait. Back up. Not that far.)

Have Libby and I lost that desire? In the past two years, the only place we've gone that we haven't seen before is the trip across Florida across Lake Okeechobee. Even here on Champlain, there are places that we haven't been to and we have no plans to go there.

Have we lost the wanderlust? I sure hope not. I also hope we can make up for it in the coming winter season. We still haven't seen the Exumas, central and southern Bahamas where there are thousands of wonderful islands. I hope to get there next season. However, we won't cross over until April. That way, we get to see the best of it without the nasty winter storms.