We were traveling down one of the straighter sections of canal when a faster sailboat roared by us at 7kts versus our 6kts. Even under power it’s hard to lose to another sailboat. But he wasn’t keeping a tight helm and I could imagine the pilot yacking away and periodically looking up and making course adjustments, so I felt better about losing out. When he did a strong S-curve up ahead underneath a bridge, I assumed he swerved to avoid a log or something in the water. Ha, no such thing, now I think he was using his auto pilot and it was simply searching for the magnetic heading. Because as we traveled under the same bridge our autopilot did the same thing to our boat! The iron in the bridge added about 20deg variance to the heading and then swung back minus 20 as it oscillated back to the original heading. This became entertainment for me measuring the MagVar as we transited different bridges. The old railroad bridges had the most magvar, the new road bridges the least. Likely the result of modern highway using steel versus iron. Checkout the video below on a different bridge.
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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