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.

051 - Med Style Anchoring – It’s so European

It’s complicated but it really lets you pack them in. Having done it now 3 times now, I hope I’m done with it. For us it’s complicated by the tender hanging off the stern and our stern anchor rode being 300 ft long in the bottom of a lazarette under a pile of other items. All the rode has to come out into the cockpit for attaching to a tree on the shore. It makes for a messy operation. Let’s see if I can explain. To anchor med style, you have to be able to backup well, which being a sailboat puts us at a distinct disadvantage (can you hear me saying powerboat would be better here too, but I won’t say it). You also ignore the winds as you will back into a parking spot between other boats anchoring the same way. You “simply” pick a spot, throw out the bow anchor in front of it, back into the slot and tie a rope to something substantial on the shore, and put out bumpers for your neighbors. That’s all you have to do. So we pick...

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