At last. A sunny, warm-ish weekend here
on the Coast of Illinois.
What do you do on a sunny, warmish
weekend?
Yard work?
Housework?
(snort)
Sailing, of course.
For the second year in a row, we have
harnessed up the sailboat and driven 90 minutes through miles and
miles of farmland to Rend Lake for our first sail of the new year.
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| Fields... |
I grew up surrounded by cornfields.
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| Fields... |
These are my people.
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| And more fields....no ghostly ball players though... |
At this time of year there are limited
access points open.
I guess the rangers figure very few people are willing to risk a dunk in the 53.1 degree water.
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| We were at the Dam West access area - great ramp, nice pavilion, clean bathrooms |
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| Nearly empty parking lot means plenty of room for set up. |
I guess the rangers figure very few people are willing to risk a dunk in the 53.1 degree water.
I am not willing either.
Hence the life vest.*
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| T-shirt, jeans, sweater WITH hood, sweatshirt, hat and Life Vest.This is not the Keys. |
However, the nearly perfect silence is
just too enticing.
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| So quiet you can actually hear the quiet |
Too bad the BASSBOATS
can't enjoy it. Apparently cruising the lake just fast enough to make
the motor whine while dragging your fishing lines is the perfect way
to catch fish.
I did not see many fish flying into any
of those boats.
But, anyway...
We actually had sun for the better part
of the day with winds between 5 and 10 miles and hour. We opted out
of reefing under the pretense that we need to practice reefing under
sail. The reality is this – we like going fast. And the winds
weren't really reef quality. We set out on a nice tack across the lake and noticed an interesting phenomenon.
Spiders.
Spiders.
We have noticed that once out on the
lake, we acquire in odd assortment of tiny critters. A ladybug here
and there, a tiny crawly bug once in a while and always, a couple of
tiny spiders. Yesterday we counted about 6 spiders.
No, 7.
Okay. 10.
At number ten we began to notice the
webs. They were everywhere, stuck to every stay and line that was
relatively stationary.
And then we saw them floating in the
air. Hundreds of them.
You know that scene in Charlotte's Web
when all the baby spiders float off in the breeze? Well, they all
floated to Southern Illinois and onto or around our boat.Tiny
glittering threads wisping on the breeze until they wrapped around
the fore-stay. Or the mast. Or my hat.
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| These are just two of the HUNDREDS of webs. |
Once under way, Rob gave me the tiller.
It takes me awhile to re-orient myself
to the tiller. It is the opposite of a steering wheel. You want to go
right? You push the tiller left. You want to go left? You push the
tiller right. Or just keep pushing it left until you complete a
circle.
I also get a lot of grief for having
issues with going straight.
In my defense, there is no true
'straight' in sailing. Hence all that tacking back and forth. Sort of
like that annoying Family Circus kid who leaves a dotted line around
the neighborhood to get to the house next door.
And here is where we experienced the next natural phenomenon.
I believe the technical term is Lake Effect.
I prefer the term Ghost Wind.
I prefer the term Ghost Wind.
Suddenly our nice port tack gently
drifted into an unstoppable starboard tack. It was a gentle shift. I
figured it was my tremulous tiller work so I frantically moved left.
No, right. Wait! Left!
The boom very slowly moved to the
center of the boat as the jib began to shift.
"We are accidentally coming about.."
I warned Rob. But the action was so slow there was no worry of anyone
being whapped with the boom, we just did a little shift and continued
on with sails full and a starboard tack, which we attributed to my
problems with going 'straight'.
Until it happened again with Rob at the
helm.
Ghost wind...
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| If you look closely at the picture in a darkened basement you will see the Ghost Wind... |
What we were actually experiencing is
one of the wonders of Lake sailing. (or possibly an enormous catfish
named Whiskers who was grabbing the rudder.) But Rob insists it was
the wind.
Wind is an interesting force. It is
easily influenced by so many factors. And our wind was being
influenced by the cold water temps meeting the slightly warmer air
temps which were all being shoved about by the even warmer land
temps.
There's a physics formula for that
whole thing.
But it's the weekend.
I don't do math on the weekends.
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| Boat lunch. The best place for a picnic as there are no ants. Probably because of the spiders. |
Later, there was an interesting
slide.
Up wind.
Which of course, happened with me at the
helm.
And isn't suppose to happen
I was afraid to mention it. The dagger
board was dropped all the way. (A dagger board takes the place of a
'keel' on bigger boats. This part of the boat prevents the boat from
sliding sideways downwind when winds are strong. Physics. Pfftt.)
I have no idea why we slid upwind.
It probably had something to do with the spiders.
We always save our rum for home.
We always save our rum for home.
Check out the Sailing page for a quick video of 'quiet'.
*For safety, you should ALWAYS wear a life vest when in a boat. Especially a sailboat. When the water temp is 53.1 degrees. Plus, the life vest offers a nice amount of warmth.
