Sailing from the marina where the boat spends the winter, to my home on the shore of Lake Superior, takes a day. I might have done it in as few as five hours, once. But seven hours is more typical and sometimes it’s been nine or ten hours. On Friday I gathered a group of likely suspects and we undertook to sail out.
The distance is 22.5 nautical miles, or 42 Km, or 26 statute miles: a marathon! The first challenge when leaving the dock on Mission Island, on the middle branch of the Kaministiquia River, is the lack of water depth.
Over the past few years coming out the channel, I’ve touched bottom with the keel routinely. Fortunately it’s just a sandy bottom and I’m going slowly, so I have sustained no damage, but I fear that one of these times I’ll be totally stuck. The city claims that dredging this channel is the responsibility of the coast guard (so I understand, anyway) and the coast guard says it’s up to the city; the marina advises that they don’t have permission to do the dredging so the consequence is that the channel is slowly filling up.
We came to a gentle stop in the channel, directly between the channel markers which feels very unfair. Oh well, I’ve been here before. Getting unstuck is a combination of luck and determination. We were only subjected to immobility for a few fraught minutes until the engine was able to free us, dragging the keel through the mucky bottom. There were no ominous creaks or groans of structural issues, fortunately!
My backup plan was to call the owner of the marina to tow me out if I was seriously stuck, but we had a few other tricks to try, like swing out the boom and sit on the end of it to tilt the boat over to raise the keel a bit. However briefly, being stuck isn’t really much fun and I was very happy to be freed.
Once out beyond the final channel markers we got the sails up and sailed into a gloomy, hazy, smoky bay. There was a light onshore breeze. Evidently the forest fires burning a few hundred kms to the north are directly impacting our air quality. We didn’t feel too badly lighting a cigar.
Then there was an unexpected favourable breeze, and we trimmed the sails and shortly were out in the main part of the lake, with the motor off and the sun breaking through some gaps in the clouds and smoke. The breeze was perfect for clearing up the smoke on the lake although it never fully disappeared.
Later, as the wind abated, we were able to jump off the boat and swim around and climb back aboard. The water was warmer than we anticipated.
The lake provides so many beautiful vistas.
We celebrated our safe arrival. I think this was the 22nd time for me to take the drip.
No comments:
Post a Comment