Why Can 't They Learn To Anchor?

Sloop Cove, Valcour Island
N 44 37.413 W 73 24.417

On Saturday, I got spooked by the weather forecast. I really shouldn't do that because I've been complaining that the forecasts always seem to be wrong this year. Nevertheless, they forecast severe thunderstorms for the afternoon. We were anchored in Sloop Cove with lots of Canadian boats and I didn't want to be near them during a storm.

Therefore, we sailed up the lake to a place called Deep Bay. Deep Bay is part of Point Au Roche NY State Park. They have moorings there and we had to pay $14 to spend the night. Deep Bay must be the best sheltered anchorage on the whole lake and the place to be when a storm comes.

I took the dinghy ashore and walked the nature trails. It was great. I came to a section of huge white pines. It must be an old growth area, one of the very few around. The trees were magnificent and the setting made me feel insignificant. I also came across a deep woods amphitheater. The amphitheater had split logs as benches for the audience and even a log and split log lectern. A plaque nearby commemorated the memory of Camp Red Cloud and Camp Red Wing. It must have been a great location
for a camp.

The thunderstorms missed us, passing both north and south of us. Just as well. We've seen enough of them. The next morning we sailed to Plattsburg for a pump out and then sailed back to Valcour. Both Saturday and Sunday were grey overcast days, but the winds at 10-15 knots made for excellent sailing conditions. I realized that our thinking about sailing has become too rigid. We either sail from point A to point B, where B is a destination, or we have guests onboard and sail from point A and
return to point A. The problem is that some days we don't have guests and don't have a destination to go to, but are nevertheless fine days for a day sail. It it the busman's holiday syndrome. I resolve to resist that thinking. When the weather and location is nice it's a delight to just sail even if we have no destination and no guests.

I don't mean to pick on Canadians, but the anchoring practices of the Quebec flagged boats appalls me. I'm sure that they must have seamanship training in Canada as good as anywhere else. Still, the Canadians around here seem to have no knowledge of scope. For the sake of landlubbers, I'll explain. Scope is the ratio of anchor line (and/or chain) to the depth of water. Anchors are designed to pull out easily when pulled from above, but to never pull loose when pulled horizontally. The more
the scope, the more the pull approaches horizontal. Three-to-one (3:1) is the minimum scope. We usually use 5:1 as our standard scope and increase that to 7:1 in adverse conditions. Of course, the larger the scope the bigger the radius of the circle one swings in. In a crowded anchorage, the trick is to let out enough scope to hold securely but not too much scope lest one bump against the other boats.

The Canadians from Quebec amazingly seem to be happy with a scope of only 2:1 or less. Yesterday, we watched a big expensive sail boat from Quebec try to anchor next to us. He had a yellow float on his anchor so it was easy to see where it was. He was trying to anchor in water 30-40 feet deep. We were next to him. We dropped anchor in 18 feet of water and let out 100 feet of scope. The Becer (local slang for Quebecers) tried four times. Four times he let out a scope of about 1.5:1. The yellow
float was only about 15 feed in front of his bow. Four times it dragged. Finally, he gave up and went away. His behavior seems typical among the Becers we see around here. Most, but not all, of them use far too little scope to be secure. We have no idea why their seamanship is deficient in this particular. That's why I don't want to share a crowded anchorage with Becers in a storm. It would be chaos.

Moment: Opening Day

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.

One day in early October I found myself anchored for the night in Porter Bay on Lake Champlain. Porter Bay was one of my favorite anchorages. It provided good shelter from wind and waves from all directions. It was also picturesque being surrounded by marshes. These were not salt water marshes but fresh water marshes. They are exceedingly rare in upstate New York and Vermont. From one corner of Porter Bay, in daylight, I also had a great view of Camel's Hump. Camel's Hump is Vermont's second
tallest mountain and it looks magnificent from down below.

Sailing in October on Lake Champlain had become my favorite form of vacation. Around the first of October most of the other boaters had already quit for the season. The winds would be ample, sometimes gale force. Best of all, the fall colors would be close to peak and the scenery was spectacular. When I was able to entice them, family or friends would accompany me on the week-long trip, but this time I was alone.

A down side to October sailing is that it would be cool, sometimes even cold. On this particular night the temperature dropped to well below freezing. I didn't care though because I was snug in sleeping bag down below. Little did I know what was happening as I slept.

You see, the first week of October is also the time of another annual event -- the opening of duck hunting season. It just so happened that duck season opened at 5 AM that morning. I didn't know that. I also didn't know that I was anchored at ground zero. All those beautiful marshes surrounding the bay make this the premier duck hunting spot of the whole state.

Before first light, and as I slept secure and unknowing, the duck hunters were moving in and taking positions all around me. Some of them went to blinds while others sat in their boats covered by camouflage nets and grass, making them in to floating blinds. Finally, the moment arrived -- 5 AM.

BLAM. I was awakened instantly. BLAM BLAM BLAM. My mind struggled to perceive the reality as I shook off the cobwebs of sleep. BLAM BLAM. BLAM BLAM BLAM. My God, those are gunshots. BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM. What is this; World War III? The gunshots were not only numerous they were so close that they sounded like they were coming from my boat. I scrambled up on deck in my underwear, only to slip and fall on the layer of ice that the boat had acquired overnight. "Ouch" that
hurt.

Then I looked around and finally I understood what was happening. There were a dozen or more duck blinds and boats all around me. All of them had three or four hunters in them and they were all blasting away at the few duck I could see who were already far out of range and furiously flapping away as fast as their wings could carry them.

Those dingbat hunters seemed to be caught up in the excitement and they didn't care that the ducks were long gone. BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM. I went back below decks to try to sleep some more. BLAM BLAM BLAM. I didn't get any sleep for another half hour because those danged hunters keep blasting away.

When I finally did wake up at eight o'clock all the hunters were gone and the bay was idyllically peaceful once again. I looked up at Camels Hump. It was capped by a spectacular white top where the frost coated the trees. It was pure white at the top and pure green at the bottom (evergreens only on Camel's Hump). The dividing line between the white and the green was so sharp that it could have been cut by a knife.

I really love the beauty of the nature on Lake Champlain, but in the future I'll also keep track of the date of opening day of hunting season.

The Good and The Bad

Spoon Bay, Valcour Island, NY
N 44 37.783 W 73 24.375

Yesterday (Thursday) our friend Pete drove up from Albany to go on a day sail with us. Pete is an old friend from PTI and from NYISO where I worked. Pete's wife, Mary Ellen, didn't come. Pete says that she is decidedly unenthusiastic about sailboats that heel way over in strong winds. That was too bad, but we had a lot of fun anyhow.

We met Pete at the boat launch in Willsboro Bay. Thanks to the miracles of Mapquest and/or Google, getting detailed driving directions to such a remote site is easy. Pete made it ahead of schedule.

We had no real plan for where to go for the day. There was a mild south wind in the bay but the wind and waves were considerably stronger out in the main lake. Willsboro Bay is bigger than many lakes, about 1 mile wide by 3-4 miles long. With the wind at our backs, we put up only the jib. Once we rounded the point to enter the lake we got hit with a good blast of wind and waves.

The wind blew from the south at 21 knots the whole day. It was a very steady wind. Contrast that with the forecast of SW 10-15 knots with gusts to 20. I had thought about beating upwind for the morning, then using the spinnaker to return downwind in the afternoon. The wind was too strong for that. Instead, we found that on a beam reach we were headed directly across the lake toward Burlington, so we decided to do that. Tarwathie loved it. We were heeled about 25 degrees, and doing 6.5 to
7.5 knots under the jib only. There was no need to put up the main sail. It would have been too much sail and we wouldn't have moved faster.

In just an hour, we were across to Burlington, averaging 6.8 knots on the trip. When we got there, I called Jenny's office to tell her to wave to us as we sailed past her coffee tasting room window. Then we sailed into Burlington harbor and picked up one of their moorings. That done, we went ashore and took a walk up to Burlington's Church Street.

It's always nice to see Church Street. It is always crowded with people and today was no exception. It was crowded with tourists. Pete graciously treated us to lunch at one of the sidewalk cafes. All three of us enjoyed people watching as we ate our lunch.

In the afternoon we reversed the procedure, sailing back across the lake to Willsboro Point again in one hour flat with only the jib. We didn't get to use a lot of fancy sails, but Pete got a good dose of a different kind of boating that he does on his power boat. There were very few boats out on the lake yesterday. It would have been uncomfortably rough for a power boat.

Pete filled me in on all the news of NYISO and PTI. It's fun to keep track on what your friends are doing, what's changed and what hasn't changed. I look forward to getting a tour of NYISO's new building in September.

As we were approaching the anchorage, the wind died away and a light drizzle started. It was perfect timing for a perfect day. We got Pete back to his car around 18:00. Thanks for coming Pete. You made our day. I hope you were having as much fun as you appeared to be.

Today, we sailed north to Valcour Island in preparation for meeting our son John and grandson Nick for a weekend visit. Alas, this afternoon we got a call from John. They moved up the date of his overseas deployment by 10 days. He leaves next week and he's scrambling to get ready. He had to scratch the weekend trip. That's sad but we understand. Libby is already scheming ways to get Nick up here anyway after his dad leaves.

Jenny is away this weekend on a trip to Maine, so it's just Libby and I for this weekend.

Eye On The Sky

Monday night we went to the lecture at the Bixby Library in Vergennes. The speaker was Mark Breen from the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury Vermont. Mark is best known for his deep melodious voice doing the weather forecasts on Vermont Public Radio for as long as I can remember. He does more though. The museum has a planetarium. (The only one in Vermont.) The purpose of his lecture was to promote a Stellarium kiosk that will rotate among Vermont libraries to promote interest in astronomy.

The lecture was fun. Mark is a very good speaker. His act though was upstaged by a marvelous introduction by Rachel, the librarian. Rachel spoke with such enthusiasm and animation that audience members like ourselves felt motivated to jump up with spontaneous applause. Really, Rachel should find a career in radio, or TV, or politics, or a narrator, or an audio book reader; anything that would let her use her voice publicly.

Tuesday morning, I went off to Vergennes in search of a WiFi signal. I went to the porch of the bar called Antidote where I had good luck last week. Last week I was able to sit on the porch at a table, plug in the laptop and get a good WiFi signal, all in the morning when the bar was closed. The next time I went there, their WiFi signal had changed to secure; a password was needed. I wondered if it was because of me. No matter, I sat at the table and plugged in and found another WiFi signal from some place across the street. The third time I went there, the chairs had been removed too. Now I really wonder if some silent observer really didn't like me using their facilities for free. We're in a race. Private owners of WiFi are locking down their sites one by one. At the same time, municipalities and others are opening up city and regional wide wireless access.

Anyhow, I used the WiFi to download our own free copy of Stellarium from www.stellarium.org.

Simply stated, it is a full blown planetarium that you can run in your laptop. Its features are optimized for use as a companion as you are star gazing at night. We have never been very successful before in identifying stars and other objects using star charts. We tried Stellarium last night and it made things much easier. The keys to success are that you can rotate and zoom the view to match what
you're looking at, and also that the depiction of star brightness on the screen is much more realistic than can be portrayed on paper. In a short time we were not only able to identify key stars, we were able to do it with great confidence. Using the binoculars I was also able to see four moons of Jupiter for the first time in my life. Wow. Way cool.

Today, we're heading North again to Willsboro Bay. We're going to meet my friend Pete there tomorrow. Pete is driving up from Albany to go on a day sail with us. This weekend, we'll have my son John and grandson Nick on board. Boy are we spoiled. We bounce from one fun thing to another to another.

We used the asymmetrical spinnaker today. We still have a few things to learn about it. Once I tried to gybe and one of the sheets went all the way under the hull and got stuck there by water pressure. It came back up soiled by the anti fouling bottom paint. Then, the wind picked up to 16-17 knots and it was too much for the sail. When trying to douse it we got in trouble again. The control line for the sock dangled down before the bow and got fouled on the cotter pin holding the bobstay clevis. It to was held by water pressure and we had to damage the line to get it free.

Scenes

John rigs the spinnaker.

Libby and Mary Ann enjoy a quiet moment.

Our anchor this morning.

We anchored in Porter Bay last night. It used to be one of my favorite spots and the scene of some interesting stories. Remind me to write blogs someday about "The Great Super Chicken Caper" or "Opening Day", or the one about "Toddler Dave And The Day Grandma Went Overboard"

Since the 70's Lake Champlain has become clogged with weeds up to 15 foot depth. Since almost all of Porter Bay is 8-10 feet deep. It is weed clogged. I couldn't use it any more as a secure anchorage against a real blow. Last night we had light wind so we spread out 100 feet of chain in 8 feet of water. The chain held us fixed even if the anchor couldn't bite. When I hauled it up this morning, you can see the weeds we picked up. An anchor has no chance of reaching the bottom.