Mirages

Vergennes
N 44 13.60 W 073 19.68

Well, yesterday was the day after Labor Day. Despite the fact that it was a beautiful day with a nice breeze, we found ourselves all alone out in the main part of the lake. Not a single vessel was visible as far as we could see. Wow, what a difference compared to Labor Day or compared to the weekdays last week. However, before the end of the day we did see five other sails, so the reality wasn't quite so black and white. Still it is remarkable how abrupt the end of the boating season is for most people.

As I looked north up the lake, the mirages were prominent in the morning. I've learned that one can almost always see mirages on Champlain looking north or south. They are cool. The most common mirage is that one sees an island apparently floating in the air above the water. Actually the island is below the horizon and we wouldn't see it at all but for the mirage. The mirage is caused by differences in air density near the water surface that refract the light. Many years ago I read an account of people in Washington D.C. Who saw an image village and palm trees in the sky. The account said that it was traced to a mirage of a village in Africa. I don't think I believe that account; it's too extreme. But the physics are the same.

Clinton County Community College occupies a big cream colored building on the top of a hill near Plattsburg and overlooking Valcour Island. The foundation of the building is about 200 feet above the water. Seen from Shelburne, 20 miles to the south, it appeared to be two buildings, one right side up and the other upside down. The two images joined at the ground line of the building. This too is a mirage. It makes the building appear twice as big and twice as bright than it really is. I'm not trying to show off but just this morning I was reading an article in Scientific American about gravitational lensing. The article said that the distortion of images caused by the lensing make the star images appear brighter than they really are. Aha, that's exactly the same effect as I see with the brightening of the community college.

A third type of mirage is commonly seen on highways on very hot days. It is caused when sunlight heading down toward the asphalt is bent back up by a mirage. It appears to the viewer as if a mirror-like surface was suspended just over the road far ahead of you. It can be very bright. On rare occasions, I have seen the same mirage over water.

Sorry that I can't post pictures of the mirages. I can't take zoom shots from a rolling deck. Here are some images taken from the web of the three types I discussed.
































Anyhow, we took advantage of the nice 10 knot northerly breeze to use the spinnaker. It pulled us at 5 knots all the way down to Otter Creek. It was a fun ride, but somewhat melancholy because it will be our last view of Champlain for quite a while.

Yesterday, arriving in Vergennes we were greeted by some strangers who turned out to be blog fans. One of them, Jim, is a friend of another friend, Craig, back in West Charlton. Craig told Jim about the blog and he has been following it ever since our approach to the Yucatan. Jim wanted to see our new engine. He said that he felt like flying to Florida to help us with the repowering project because he empathized with us so much. This morning, we helped Jim's buddies to climb up their mast to retrieve a jib halyard that got away from Jim. Libby and I contributed the use of our boatswain's chair and lent a hand. The other guys had never done that before and they were surprised at how easy the procedure was.

The AC adapter power brick for this laptop died yesterday. I think it had a cheap chopper method of working and it didn't like the non-sinusoidal waveforms that my AC inverter put out. The brick always ran hot and yesterday it died. I have two others on board, but naturally they use different size connectors at the notebook end. Why in the world can't they standardize on connectors for low voltage DC? I had to cannibalize and splice the wire from another power brick to the connector from the broken one. I hope this one lasts.

The Weather Forecaster Nailed It

Shelburne Bay
N 44 25.555 W 73 14.961

Considering all the bad things I had to say about the weather forecasts this year, I should give credit where credit is due. The forecast for today was sunny, cool, southerly winds 15-25, diminishing late afternoon. That is precisely what we got. Finally, they nailed one of the forecasts. Perhaps they do have forecasting tools beyond the Farmers Almanac.

The weather was important because today was the one and only day this summer that Jenny could get away and sail with us. Her boyfriend, Christian, stayed at home demolishing their garage. (They are going to build a new one.) It turned out to be a perfect day.

With Jenny on board we did a close repeat of the day when Pete came to sail with us last week. With Pete we sailed from WIllsboro Bay to Burlington for lunch, then returned. The trips to and from were both very fast with strong winds on our beam. We needed only the foresail to make Tarwathie go full speed, up to 7 knots with Pete. Today we did basically the same thing with Jenny but we started in Burlington, sailed to Willsboro Bay for lunch, then returned. All the way over and most of the way
back, we needed only the foresail to exploit the steady 20 knot wind. From the middle of the lake we had magnificent views of the mountains in both New York and in Vermont.

Halfway back Libby wanted practice reefing the mainsail, so we took a double reef and raised that too. Being Labor day, and being superb sailing weather, just about every boat on the lake was out sailing. However, Champlain is so big that we never felt crowded no matter how many boats were out there. All the sailboats I saw appeared to be performing at their best, regardless of the point of sail.

The best part of the round trip was that the autopilot did a great job leaving the three of us to loll in the sun on the foredeck and shoot the breeze. Tarwathie held a nearly constant speed, heading and angle of heel all the way over. Jenny had a great time and actually had time to relax. All three of us appreciated the quiet time to just talk knowing that this is the last time we'll see each other this year.

There was another treat in store. Libby made lasagna and Caesar salad for lunch. She does that only on special occasions.

My oh my. Sailing days don't get much better than this one. I'm out of laudatory adjectives to describe it.

Unaccustomed Pop heroes

Jenny's House, South Burlington
No LL

When we sailed in Florida and points south, we have always been surprised by how many boats we see with home port Montreal. We learned this summer that nearly all those boats actually have Lake Champlain as their home base.

Lake Champlain sailors have a relatively large fraction of lake sailors who dream of becoming blue water sailors. Therefore, we're not surprised to see that Tarwathie attracts many admiring looks. She is instantly recognizable by all as a blue water boat, and recognizable by a large fraction of those as one of those famous Westsail 32s.

The past few days, in the vicinity of Vergennes and Porter Bay we've been visited by a number of sailors who admire Tarwathie and who envy Libby and I for our life style. Being rather plain and ordinary people, and shy to boot, we're unaccustomed to the attention. However, it is hard to resist flattery. We love answering questions and of giving visitors the quick tour of Tarwathie above and below decks, and in writing this blog -- immodest as it may be.

Increasingly, we find that Tarwathie fans contact us via email and learned about us via this blog. I have no idea how many people read this blog but I can say that the number seems to be increasing.

If you learn that we are in your vicinity, feel free to contact us or simply come along side and hail us. We'll be pleased to see visitors.

p.s. Only one more week on Champlain before we start heading south.

Valcour Shores Repaired

Reader Jay noticed that the pictures disappeared from my Valcour Shores report. I apologize for that. They were there when I last looked at it. In any event, I uploaded the pictures once again. I hope they'll stick around. Please read Valcour Shores if you haven't done so already. Thanks Jay.

By the way, I think I found the limits to this wonderful blogger medium. It is user friendly up to four pictures per post. Beyond four it is absolute hell. If I post the report in fragments, then it runs afoul of the blog site's way of putting most recent posts at the top whereas readers read reports from the top down.

It took me only two hours to write the Valcour Shores report, but it took 4 hours to upload it with all the pictures. Then the pictures disappeared and I just spent another 4 hours doing it again. What a pain. You'll see only shorter reports from me in the future.

Moment: The Great Super Chicken Caper

Porter Bay
N 44 13.753 W 73 19.049

I'm sure you've heard the expression, "My life is measured by hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror." The expression may be a bit overstated but it is essentially true. A life's memories consist primarily of a few choice moments. When we approached retirement, Libby and I thought back on life's choice moments and we realized that very many of them were moments on sailboats. This is the story of one of those moments. I'm posting this one today because we are anchored at the exact spot described in the story.

One day in the first week of October, I found myself sailing down Lake Champlain. For crew, I had my father Jerry, my close friend Walt, and my oldest son John. We were barrelling down the lake at breakneck speed under a spinnaker.

Murphy's law had prevailed that day. As soon as we raised the spinnaker the wind started picking up. We traveled faster and faster as the wind and waves increased. Whenever it blows from the north on Lake Champlain, the choppy waves build up rapidly. Now the wind was blowing 20-25 and the waves were 4-5 feet.

The wind was far too strong to use a spinnaker. Nevertheless, I didn't dare to change course very much or to try to take the spinnaker down. I feared loosing control and running over the sail. I was battling the weather helm. One thing I hate about spinnakers is that if you let the boat veer from wind dead astern to wind in the hind quarter, the amount of weather helm builds rapidly from none to a lot. It is a positive feedback effect. The more the boat points up to the wind, the more the weather
helm. I knew from experience that if I allowed the wind to get up to the beam that the weather helm would overpower the rudder and that we would suffer a knockdown.

Therefore, I was between a rock and a hard place. There was already too much wind yet I didn't dare do anything about it. As the waves became large, the boat started surfing. A Clipper 26 is a very light weight boat and under those circumstances she could actually plane. As a wave lifted the stern the speed would pick up and spray would start flying from the bow wave. My knot meter had a maximum of 15 knots and it would max out. Of course it would only last for 2-3 seconds until the wave
passed underneath. Only once did I manage to surf skillfully enough to stay with a wave for as much as 5-8 seconds.

Anyhow, I had a plan for how to escape from our predicament. Right ahead of us was the entrance to Porter Bay. Porter bay was one of my favorite anchorages. It offers protection from wind in almost all directions. My plan was to enter the bay, then make a sweeping U turn. That would bring us in to the wind shade of a point, and also behind a long concrete pier that would screen us from the waves. I told the crew about the plan, and instructed them on what to do. I would hold the helm, while
Walt would detach the spinnaker pole at the bow, and then prepare to anchor. Jerry would grab the bottom of the sail and keep it from going in to the water. John was to lower the spinnaker once the pole was detached.

So here we went, flying at what seemed like jet speed for a sailboat. We may have been doing 8-10 knots when entering the bay. That's way faster than a 26 foot boat is able to travel. As planned, I made our big U turn. As planned we sailed in to calm waters with no wind and no waves. As planned, Walt detached the pole and Jerry grabbed the bottom of the sail. I tied off the tiller in preparation for going forward to lend a hand to the others.

I'm sure you've heard the expression, "Hours of terror punctuated by moments of sheer terror." This was one of those moments. What I'm about to describe happened in just a few seconds, although it seems like an eternity in my memory.

An eddy in the wind unexpectedly came around the point and blew at us from the south (that's the opposite direction to the prevailing wind.) The puff of wind caught the spinnaker and inflated it like a giant parachute. My poor father Jerry did what he was asked to do and held on to the bottom of that sail tenaciously. His feet started lifting off the deck. John leapt to his aid and wrapped his arms around Jerry's knees.

At the same time, our residual velocity plus the push of the wind puff behind us was pushing us toward the shore. We were about to run aground on the rocks in seconds if I couldn't stop us. I spotted what was happening, turned around and sprang back to the cockpit. The tiller was tied down so I tried to start the outboard motor to stop our forward motion. Thing's were not destined to end that easily.

I gave the motor starting cord a mighty tug. It started first time (good motor). I spun it around backward to apply reverse thrust. You see, the reverse gear in that outboard motor was very ineffective. To get significant reverse thrust I had to turn the motor 180 degrees. But as I turned it this time the rubber fuel line broke off right at the motor nib. Starved for fuel, the motor stopped.

With only seconds to go before disaster it was time for lightning action. I didn't stop to think. I spun the motor back forward again. I grabbed my trusty Mora knife from the sheath on my belt. (Any really serious sailor should always wear a very sharp sheath knife.) I sliced off the broken end of the fuel hose and jammed the remaining hose back on to the nib. I started the engine. (Thank God it started again on the first pull.) I whipped it around 180 degrees. I applied full power and stopped
our forward motion just seconds before we were about to crash.

Then I turned around and looked forward again. Walt had joined John and managed to pull Jerry back on to the deck. Just about then, the puff of wind stopped and the sail fell slack. The rest went smoothly. We lowered the spinnaker and we motored back away from the shore a bit and dropped the anchor. Then I told the rest of the crew the part of the story they hadn't seen. You see, they were so occupied in rescuing Jerry that they were not even aware of the near disaster with the rocks on shore.

Later that night we all joked and swapped stories. The news of recent weeks had something to do with an NFL football team's mascot called Super Chicken. Our joke evolved into visions of Jerry, being nicknamed Super Chicken, flying up in to the sky and disappearing over the mountains underneath a colorful spinnaker chute. That's why I call it the Great Super Chicken Caper.