011-Ruts on Halfmoon Bay

I love the name, Halfmoon Bay, it’s so romantic sounding. But this bay on the Hudson is also referred to as Haverstraw, the nearby town, which sounds so pedestrian. But everyone’s boat is floated a bit differently. I like traveling; sailing the wind, navigating, and watching the shore slide by. Lucy likes quiet moments at the end of the day and shore excursions exploring “ruts.” A “trigger” word for Lucy’s infatuation with wagon wheel ruts during the western migration. Brian is activities based; he likes experiences like riding jet skis, snorkeling, driving the tender, sailing under full sailing with lots of wind. Like anything else, it’s always compromises for the family who’s boat floats. Brian got his moment at anchor on Halfmoon Bay where he swung on the halyard, paddled his paddle board, swam, drove the tender fast, and even dropped a fishing line over the side. We ended the day playing board games after one of Lucy’s Meals-On-Boats (MOB). As we headed off to our cabins for the night, Brian said “this was a great day, thanks dad.” Brian ended my day by floating my boat!

Brian swings on the spinnaker halyard.

He had to paddle to keep up with the boat at anchor, there was a significant river current.

Brian swinging off the halyard into the water with style.

Lucy and Brian take a shower in the rain

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046 - Fog Bank a Comin

To all those who insist on paper charts as a backup to electronics, “what good are they in fog?” What was a surprise to us was the frequency of fog on the lakes, it wasn’t anticipated by us, seemed like a New England issue not a lake issue. But the water is cold (60s in the big water) and the air is warm which is perfect for dense fog. We learned at the shipwreck museum that a large percentage of ship wrecks on the Great Lakes are ships driving into other ships, mostly in dense fog. Radar, GPS, electronics charts and AIS should mostly preclude this cause of shipwrecks. We expected the number one cause for shipwrecks to be bad weather (think Edmond Fitgerald) but bad weather only accounted for ¼ of so of great lakes shipwrecks. With far better forecasting today, this too shouldn’t be an issue like it used to be. But back to our story, without radar, we played our fog horn, set a watch on the bow, watched the AIS for ships (we could see them ...

048 - Big Water

The Great Lakes are mislabeled, they are really inland seas. They are so big that one end can have very different weather than the other end or even the middle. Waves however don’t really care where they come from and can travel hundreds of miles, reflecting off hard coastlines. Shallow waters amplify the waves by making for a shorter period; this can create little waves that brings the boat to a complete stop as it goes up and down pounding against a wall of water. Similarly, one end of the lake may be experiencing 20+kts of wind and the other end could be in a dead calm with waves that originated from the other end. Makes it tough to know what the conditions are for your journey, so when its good take advantage of it, it will likely change.

049 - Currents

I admit the picture doesn’t show much, but this was 5.5kts underneath Peace Bridge near Port Huron. We were doing 1/2kt against the current. People on the shore were walking faster than us. It was impressive. I’m glad to be on Lake Huron where there are no currents. The lake does slosh around with wind but I can handle that, I really don’t want to fight 5.5kts of current again, it was taking the boat and tossing it all around like a cork. I was working the tiller harder than in a following sea. You can see a bit of an eddy in the lower right but you’ll have to trust me on this one. The dramatized blurry picture below shows the turbulence and terror of the experience. It also captures the Loch Huron monster in the middle left – it’s unexplained what that silver hump is. Yikes!

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