Rattled

South Burlington, Vermont 

We slept at Jen's house last night, but this morning we went back to Shelburne Bay to check on the boat.  Horrors! She dragged overnight, even with Bessie our 80 pound fishermans anchor.  The GPS said that we dragged only 50 feet, but it looked like more than 200 feet to me.  (When we raised Bessie however, she had dug in deep, so she would not have dragged any more. )

I guess that I must rate that anchorage by Allen's Hill as poor holding.  We tried it twice and dragged both times, and with two different anchors. 

So what to do? Some of those nasty severe thunderstorms are on the way here today.  Luckily, the harbor master Dan told us that we could use a mooring that happened to be vacant this year. So we move to the mooring this morning, so Tarwathie  is secure.   Thank you very much Dan.  We also met another sailor this morning who told us a harrowing story about tearing his thumb off while sailing in the Bahamas.  He was lucky enough to get flown to Miami where they sewed it back on.  Today he has almost full function.  Whew. 

Wannabe cruisers take note.  When you are enjoying yourself on shore, there is always a nagging doubt as to how secure your boat (your home) is with you away.  Big boats have enough crew to leave an anchor watch crew on board.   Marinas make you feel secure, and in most cases they are secure, but they ruin your budget.  If we stayed in marinas all the time, it would use about 100% of our income. 

Stop Whining Already

South Burlington, Vermont

Several times this summer I whined about not having clear views of the mountains from the lake.   Well, now I'll have to shut up because yesterday and today the air is marvelously clear.  We could see the mountains just fine.

By the way, my definition of clear is that we can see the colors of the trees on the mountain slopes 30 miles away,   At midday, we could see both the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains and the western slopes do The Adirondack Mountains.  God it was great.

We took a very leisurely sail from Valcour down to the southern end of Shelburne Bay.  I say leisurely, because our speed was only 2.5 knots.  It was a great day.  

Shelburne Bay is the site of our famous rainbow picture.   This time however we sailed all the way down to the bottom of the bay to a place we haven't been to in many years.  The last time there, our anchor dragged in the middle of the night and we had a hard time finding an alternate place to anchor secure from a strong south wind. It was not a pleasant memory.

This time it was much nicer.  In the first place, we now have Bessie so we are not worried about dragging.  In the second place, I met the harbor master of the nearby Shelburne mooring field.  Would you believe he reads this blog.  Anyhow, he was very nice.  Third, I sat in the suspended chair and watched the Wednesday sailboat races of the Shelburne Yacht Club.  That was great fun.  Come to think of it, the past three times I watched sailboats race were in Shelburne Bay.

Big family weekend coming up.  Coming to Jenny's house will by our son John, granddaughters Katelyn and Victoria, my sister Nancy, our niece Élan, and guests Natalie and Max.  They all want to go sailing.

Speciation

En route, Lake Champlain
44 29.87 N 073 19.50 W


We were asked if we have seen evidence of global warming while cruising the past seven years. We say no. Distinguishing weather from climate is very hard. If you can do it at all, it is best done from a fixed location you've lived all your life. We can however, see evidence of Darwinism as we travel.


The evidence I speak of has to do with the differences in dolphins, flies and mosquitoes we see up and down the coast.


We see dolphins almost everywhere we sail except on Lake Champlain. We see them in salt water and fresh water. The biggest pod of dolphins (~300) I remember seeing was near Cape Charles at the mouth of the Chesapeake. Very noticeable is the gradual change in size and shape of the dolphins as we move north ans south. They are biggest in southern waters. I estimate that Florida dolphins are about three times heavier than Maine dolphins.


Mosquitoes too vary greatly from one place to another. They vary in size, in speed, in voraciousness, in determination to find their way inside, and in their skill at avoiding being killed. It starts with the notorious no-see-ems in Florida. They are small enough to go through most screens and too small to see for swatting purposes. Technically, they aren't mosquitoes at all.


Of course, the worst mosquitoes are the ones most successful in biting us. I hate it when I swat 10 of them and find that 8 of the, are already engorged with my blood.


We are bothered by flies less often than mosquitoes, but when they do it is worse. Fly bites hurt. Flies draw blood like mosquitoes. Some flies are so wary and so fast that they are very hard to kill. The worst flies ever we encountered on the ICW in Georgia in the month of May. They came by the hundreds. 

If we must have flies and mosquitoes, why can't they all be big, fat, slow, and not hungry.  

Anyhow, these obvious variations in species characteristics are similar to those that Darwin himself noticed in The Galapagos. Changes are gradual. Interbreeding with neighbors prevents drastic step changes. Over great distances over a great time, drift in the genes can give rise to an entirely new species. Cool.

Soaring In Vermont

Valcour Island
44 36.26 N 073 25.34 W

A reader commented on this picture I posted a few weeks ago.  He said that the clouds look lenticular, and he asked about soaring in Vermont.  That type of clouds signals particularly great weather for soaring.

 

Yes there is soaring in Vermont and 20 years ago I was doing it.  The best soaring in Vermont is in the central valley east of the Green Mountains. Especially  fun is ridge soaring, where you place your wing tip 6 feet from the tree tops on the windward side of a ridge, then you just follow the contours. 

A special treat comes in the fall when mountain waves develop in the air.  Once I rode a wave behind Mount Mansfield up to 14000 feet.  Up there the wind speed matched my airspeed and I was motionless with respect to the ground.  It was also nearly soundless. It was like having an easy chair in the sky. I could see west as far as Toronto, east as far as Mount Washington in New Hampshire.  It was magic. 

Soaring was expensive for me.  Also, I'm not a natural pilot. I need to fly twice per week or else the skills atrophy.  When we moved away from Vermont, I had to give up flying. 

P.S. My camera has been stamping my pictures with the wrong dates. I'll turn stamping off. 

Reminders

South Burlington, Vermont

We've been at Jenny's house for four days. Today we return to the boat. The past 24 hours I monitored closely the weather in Marathon, down in the keys.  I worried about our friends there.   Based on what I saw, the winds were mostly in the 20 knot range, one gust to 45 knots, it sounds like Marathon dodged the bullet.

Below are two of the things that we do to remind ourselves about important things.

1. On our fridge/freezer we turn it all the way up when the engine is running to build up  store of cold.  We put a green marker in the latch as a reminder to turn the temperature back to normal when the engine is off.
2. We use the wall surface at the top of the companionway ladder as a white board.  One comes face-to-face with it climbing up.  I write special reminder notes there.  In the picture it says SEA COCKs, reminding me that sea cocks are closed because we're leaving the boat.  They must be re opened when we come aboard and before we start the engine.

 

 

The problem is that these, and other methods of memory reminders, fail to work for us any more.  For example, recently when we stopped the engine, Libby removed the green marker, turned down the fridge, then put the marker back.  In her mind, the marker is where it is supposed to be all the time and its reminder function is lost.  I too fail to be reminded by reminders.

We could combat familiarity by inventing a new method of making reminders each time, bu then we would have a hard time remembering what the reminder was for.  It would be like inventing a new password for each Internet site ever time you visit it.

I think the technical answer is to make check lists for each situation and to develop a culture of using them.  We would need a large number of checklists for different functions.  I also fear making the culture overly disciplinarian by insisting on their use so often.