Good Sailing, Good Company

South Burlington, VT

Our friends Pierre and Christina found the perfect gift for Libby and me.   They invited us to spend a day on Lake Champlain with them on their cruising boat.

We met in Burlington, had lunch at Jen's house, then down to the boat.   Their vessel is a 36' steel cutter, designed and built by Pierre himself.   She's a fine vessel (we learned however than in French, one says he's a fine vessel).  It felt especially good to handle a heavy displacement vessel with a tiller.

The winds were fair, and we sailed close hauled all the way down to Porter Bay.   Blog readers know that Porter Bay is one our our favorite places but our hosts have never been there.  It was a great sail.   The next morning, the wind picked up thus providing another great sail back to Burlington with the wind behind us.   Pierre and Christina said that since beginning their summer cruise a week ago, they haven't needed to motor onece.  Cool.

Anyhow, Pierre and Christina are some of the swetest people we know.  The four of us get along famously, and we enjoy each other's company.  Hopefully, we'll get to see them again before the summer is over.

Thank you for a great day.

Christina at the helm

Pierre, Libby, Christina at the bow

The Conneticut River

South Burlington, VT

Last week we took TJ on a cruise up and down the Connecticut River.  That river and its valley were things that I never paid much attention to before.  From years past, I was familiar with the river down near Windsor, CT.   From 2012, we saw some of the beautiful stretches of the river up in NH.  But, the Vermont sections, no.

I wanted to cruise and to camp on the primitive camping sites along the river.   However, we are still in the early learning stage, and I could not be confident of estimating travel times to get there well enough.  The sites, are widely separated by 25 or more miles.

So what we did was to get a camp site in Brattleboro to use as a base camp.  Then we took two day trips, one south (into Massachusetts) and one north, with the Vernon, VT dam as the mid point.

What we saw was much prettier than I expected.  Up and down the river, we saw only a handful of farms or homes.  Most places, we saw only the high river banks, the trees on the banks, and the beautiful mountains on either side.  A check with Google Earth however, shows that behind those trees on the banks are lots of farms, roads, houses and civilization.   I call that "the veneer effect", and I've blogged about that before.  Visible from the water is a thin veneer of seemingly unspoiled wilderness.

One other thing we learned.  99.9% of the river banks are too steep and too thick with undergrowth to be able to go ashore.  That I did not expect.  The few spots where we could stop could be an hour or two hours apart!

At the north end of our second day, was Putney, VT.  Our river cruising ambitions, include stopping to explore small towns that we have never seen before.  What did we find in Putney?  Lunch, a library where I could check email, The Vermont Spinnery (see below), and Curtis' BBQ stand.    It was charming.

Nice Eagle or Osprey Nest

The Vermont Spinnery where they make yarn

The knitted entrance to the spinnery

Vermont Route 30

On the way back, we found roads and sections of Vermont that we've never seen before.   Particularly nice was Vermont Route 30 from Manchester, to Dorset, to Wells, to Fair Haven.  Wow, what a pretty valley, and not tourist infested!   I'm ashamed (and delighted) to admit that we are discovering more about Vermont this summer than we ever did the many years we lived here, or cruised on Lake Champlain.  

When you live on a cruising boat, and you do not have a car, you see and experience wonderful things, but there is also much you can't see.

Beginners Again!

South Burlington, VT

Libby and I may be fairly called seasoned sailboat cruisers by now, but regarding cruising by canoe, we are rank amateurs.

• Last Thursday our intent was to launch TJ in the Connecticut River, south of the Vernon, VT dam.   We were using a paddling guide map to locate a launch ramp.  Well it wasn't what we expected.  Instead of a concrete ramp it was just a gravel river bed.
  
• Ignoring the lack of concrete, I backed up the trailer to the water's edge. I didn't want to get the car tires into soft sand, so I stopped far away.   The trailer was not level, and the rails were 3' higher than the water.  As we attempted to launch the canoe, it fell off the rails sideways, and swamped in the shallow water.  Everything in the canoe was soaked.
  
• After drying out the canoe, I went to drive the car away.  The front wheel drive car just spun its wheels digging into the gravel.  Oh no!   I unhooked the trailer and headed the car at an angle up slope, and thank goodness it made it.  I then had to drag the trailer up the slope by hand.
  
• While canoeing that day, all I could think about was that the car might not be able to climb the steep gravel driveway back up to the highway.
  
• How much river could we cover in a day?  Our first time out, I measured a top speed of more than 10 knots.  Averaging 10 mph for a liesurely 10 hour day makes for 100 miles per day.   Well, we don't travel at top speed, and we found that we need rest stops more frequently.  My second itereation extimate, 20 miles per day.  I was only off by 500%.
  
• Even with a paddling map, I found it more difficult to navigate than I thought.   Not where to go navigate, but where to look for launch ramps, camp sites, and points of interest to stop at.  I was ashamed to resort to Google Maps.
  
• Returning to the launch at the end of the day, I saw I sign that I missed seeing in the morning.  It warned me that water levels below the dam can change dramatically with little warning, and that the place where I left the car parked could have been under water.

Rather than being embarrassed, I am thrilled to start at the bottom of a boating learning curve once again.  It makes things fresh and exciting.

Next blog, I'll report on how nice the river and the trip were.

Tomorrow we are meeting our favorite Quebecois crusing friends to spend a day on their boat.   Hooray!

Our camp site base of operations.

Vermont's Den of Horror

South Burlington, VT

I usually write about how idyllic Vermont is.  For example, yesterday when Libby and I canoed down Otter Creek to Lake Champlain, and another of our favorite spots, Porter Bay.  Today I feel compelled to write about something very different.

Huntington Gorge is a place in Vermont only a few miles away from South Burlington.  We have not been there, but looking at the pictures, it appears to be beautiful.  Idyllic nature; beautiful, inviting and as good as it gets.  Yesterday, a woman drowned there.  She is the 26th person to drown there since the 1950s.  She was not swimming, she fell in.

Even worse than the death count, is the horrible nature of the deaths.  You see people get trapped underwater, held in by the pressure of the running water.  Often they are pinned in only 2 feet of clear water.  Loved ones and rescuers can look into their faces, and reach in to grasp their hand, yet are unable to pull them out.  In this week's case, it took 18 men and a cable from a heavy tow truck to recover the body.

Worst was a case a few years back when a VT state police rescue diver was himself trapped.  He was pinned under the water with his SCUBA gear.  The picture in the paper the next morning showed a close up of his face through the water and through the face plate of his mask.  He could not be rescued either.  Horrible horrible horrible.

"Why is this allowed to continue?", you ask.  Apparently it is on private property and the state is powerless.    There are numerous warning signs, but evidence suggests that the attractiveness proves irresistible.

Red White and Blue

South Burlington, VT

Those are the three colors of the day of course.  But rather than posting a picture of the flag, I thought of this shot taken by Jen on our trip out west last March.   The scene is beside the road leading up to Bryce Canyon. Click on the picture to see it full size, or maybe save it as your screen wallpaper.