Tag: sailing

First fire, final sail

November 1st, 2020

It was cold for sailing yesterday, with a high of 48 ℉, but the wind was perfect. It was a steady Force 3 (or maybe Force 4?) breeze, and we knew it would likely be our last chance to sail for the season. We waited until afternoon to catch the warmest part of the day and to give the sky a chance to clear of its low, grey clouds. At 4:15pm we were headed out onto the water while the only other boat on the lake was going in.

One other sailboat on the lake, heading in as we were heading out

Running with the wind

The sail was glorious. The wind was the perfect strength to move our little boat near her top speed, and we sailed every point of sail. We ran with the wind behind us, where the water gurgles and and makes pliant sounds because we’re moving with it. We beat into the wind, where the water slaps and makes hard smacking sounds because we’re moving against it. And we sailed back and forth across the lake on a reach, the fastest point of sail, where the water makes fast rattling sounds, where the wind blew my hair from my face, and where we moved so fast we made our own little wake while under sail.

Moving fast under sail

Recent wind stripped the trees of leaves, so most of the fall color is already done. The light itself was beautiful, though. We dropped the jib upwind of the ramp, and took one more trip back and forth across the lake as the sun dropped. Halfway across, I started shivering, and I didn’t stop until we were in the car with the heat on. I’m going to have to figure out a better glove situation for cool weather sailing; my hands are useless when they’re cold and numb. But look at the light!

Golden October light just before the sun dropped

When we got out of the car at home, I started shivering again, despite wool socks and leggings under my pants, and a tank top, long sleeved shirt, fleece, light down jacket, and wool hat up top. Brian warmed tomato soup while I changed into different fleece layers, and only after the soup and a grilled cheese did I stop shivering. Just to be on the safe side, though, and because I started reading Jane Eyre yesterday and wanted to cozy up with some tea and my book next to a warm hearth, I built a fire while Brian played guitar. I lay next to it and read, warm and cozy after a gorgeous day in the wind.

First fire of the season
October sail with cirrus clouds

October 19th, 2020

We watch the weather in October, ready to jump if there’s a day warm enough and with enough breeze to move our little O’Day Day Sailer. The sailing season will end soon, and our every sail may be the last one for the year.

Sails and blue sky

The weather Sunday was glorious: crisp skies, high cirrus clouds, high of 60℉, and light wind. And by light wind, I mean barely a breath.

It was a great day to study light air. I wrote about Force 3 wind, the gentle breeze, from my living room. On our sail I observed what Force 1 wind, also known as light air, looks and feels like. The water is glassy, you might feel a cool breath on your cheek, but only if your face is angled exactly right. Force 1 wind is classified as 1-3 mph.

Force 1: light airs; glassy calm, some ripples

Between Force 1 and Force 2: glassy ripples

Force 2 wind, or a light breeze, is 4-6 mph and creates an overall ripple pattern on the water. When you’re sitting in a patch of glassy water, and you see ripples coming toward you, you can expect a puff of light breeze to come up and move you soon.

Mix of Force 1 and Force 2: ripples with a patch of glassy calm

Between Force 1 and Force 2 — glassy ripples

Our boat is small, so it doesn’t take much to push it. If there’s any air movement at all, including 1-3 mph light air, Egretta will sail, but it will take a long time to get anywhere. In this low wind, we moseyed up the lake to the dam in about twice the time is usually takes us.

The lake was quiet except for the honking of geese and the light taps of water against the shiny blue hull.

On the way back, the wind behind us, we turned on some music, Alex the Astronaut, and we let the wind push us home. Again, it took about twice the time it usually does. I didn’t care. The sun was out, and the cirrus clouds were beautiful.

Cirrus clouds

Our sailboat, Egretta, at the ramp
Force 3, gentle breeze

October 18th, 2020

The wind is still outside. Or it was while I wrote that sentence. I heard only the hum of our neighbor’s condenser unit, the churr of insects, the muffled chuffle of a distant lawn mower. Then I heard a lift of leaves. A rustle. I raised my eyes again and saw oak leaves tickle; the heavy boughs that hold them dipped and swayed with a slow, gentle nod. I don’t think that’s quite a force 3 wind.

Wind speed tables, developed in the 19th century and still useful now, classify winds into forces, ranging from Force 1 (1-3 mph) up to Force 10 (55-63mph). A Force 3 wind is described as a gentle breeze. Small, glassy waves form in its presence, only 6.5 inches to a foot in height. A flag will occasionally stir in a Force 3. I see no flags and no water with enough fetch to show me what they’d do. The neighbor’s pool won’t cut it.

I’d like to be out in a Force 3 wind. My notes say that’s 8-12 mph, which seems higher than I would have thought to cause those conditions. I wish we had a wind gauge.

If a Force 3 is where we can get on a steady course and just go, both of us on the windward side of the boat because it’s heeling, and there are no other boats around, I’d like to be out in a Force 3 wind. I think that would be the perfect wind speed for our little boat; a Force 3 wind is described as promoting comfortable sailing.

Today is overcast and cool. If we were to sail, we’d need long pants and fleece and windbreakers. I love fall sailing; the lake is generally empty and silent, and the changing leaves are like sparkling gems on the mountainside. Maybe we can go this weekend. Our paddleboarding days might be over for the year, though.
Currents coil

October 10th, 2020

When I clean my fountain pens, my favorite part is when I first dip the nib in a bowl of clean water. As soon as the tip of the ink-drenched metal touches the water’s surface, swirls of color enter the pool. The coils of ink remain distinct from the clear water for long enough to snap a photo before the color diffuses and liquid becomes a lighter shade than the original ink: watery mint instead of emerald, pink instead of deep purple.

I often wish we could color the air in the same way. When we sail on Claytor Lake, the squirrelly gusts that whack the sails and feel like they’ll knock us over make me think of the coils of ink in my bowl of water, or the swirling currents in the ocean, of the eddies that form when rushing streams catch on fallen limbs or squeeze between boulders.

This swirling happens with air too. We can feel it in the bowl of the lake when we sail our boat, with mountains that rise up around the water to block, catch, and redirect wind. But we can’t see the swirls, not above the surface of the water. Our one indicator is the lake’s skin: it puckers with the turbulence of swooping air that pushes the water with a thousand flicks, like blowing on soup that’s formed a thin skin. We can see the gust coming, but we can’t see the shape of it. We can’t see it swoop and swirl like a mermaid’s hair underwater.
First Sail of the Season

May 31st, 2020

My husband, our daughter, and I sailed our little day sailer, Egretta, today on a sunny blue-sky day with white puffy clouds and Irish green hillsides. Our daughter was excited to wear a new swim top she bought for the vacation we won’t go on because of the pandemic.

We’ve had lots of rain and storms lately. Rafts of debris floated on the surface of Claytor Lake, from twigs and branches to tree limbs and 20-foot logs. As a result, despite 75 degree weather and crisp, clear skies, there were few power boats, making it a great day for sailing. We had a (mostly) steady light breeze, with some gusts. Due to frustrations anyone who’s used an outboard motor can relate to, we wanted to try sailing without taking an engine. And it turned out fine: we paddled away and into the ramp as if we’d done it a thousand times. It was so much easier than fighting with the motor.

We went out at about 4:30 in the afternoon. In case we wanted to stay out until sunset, I made a picnic dinner of pita sandwiches with black-eyed pea hummus, sliced tomatoes, avocado, and lettuce. I threw green grapes and sugar snap peas in the cooler, and we also stopped at a gas station for salty snacks, but our daughter ate half the can of Pringles on our way to the lake.

We paddled away from the ramp easily. We raised the mainsail, and the fresh breeze filled it. Water snapped and rattled against Egretta‘s hull, and we sped on long tacks up the lake to the dam and back down past the ramp and the beach.

Instead of being nervous as I have been previous summers as a newbie, I had fun this time crewing. We had enough wind to keep me active, watching the telltales and constantly trimming the jib. Our daughter lay on the bow, and I balanced us by moving from windward to center to leeward depending on the heel of the boat. We had a few gusts that tipped us unexpectedly, making me do that jerk reflex like you do when you’re falling in a dream, but the tipping didn’t frighten me like it used to.

I’m so grateful winter is over. Now it is finally the season for flowers and sailing.

Egretta‘s mainsail

Green hills of Claytor Lake

Our dinner view from a boardwalk at the marina
Blue water

November 1st, 2019

Blue water. The deepest seas. Where there’s no white sand below to make the water aquamarine, or sea grass to turn it green, no marsh mud and nutrients to make it murky brown. Blue water is the desert of the ocean: too far from land, and too deep, for sediment or nutrients. It is the abyssal liquid blue of sunlight piercing pure water, and refracting until it disappears into depths too deep for light to penetrate.

My husband wants to blue water sail. He wants to cross an ocean in a sailboat. Not me. All I can picture are walls of sea that our (comparatively) tiny boat would climb up and slide down, violent storms, utter isolation, and certain death by drowning with no chance of rescue if something were to happen to our boat.

I can see the draw of all that (except the drowning). I’d love to sail on the world’s largest liquid sapphire. Can you imagine the blue of that fathomless water? Or the depth of black of the sky at night, sprayed with stars?

But I’m not brave enough for the risks blue water sailing entails, the distance from land. No, I’d rather stick to the shallows, where the water turns turquoise over bleached coral sand, where palm fronds flutter on land I can see from the boat, where our longest passage is a day, and there’s an island at the end of it, with fresh fish to eat, music, and piña coladas. Where we can snorkel off the boat and see fan corals swaying under a gentle sea, so close we could reach out and touch them, rather than jumping in and looking into a bottomless blue abyss.

Photo by Sarah Lee on Unsplash.