Interesting day

We spent the night ‘on the hook’ at Crown Point NY. Lovely if not quite as bucolic as I was hoping for on our first night anchoring. The Champlain Bridge loomed large to our port, though given the light wind and current was just as large when it was on our starboard…. But we had good holding and good protection, so all was well. We woke up to a forecast that was difficult to assess. Just as soon as we said ‘leave in an hour’, thunder was apparent from the south. To be clear, we are fair weather boaters and thunder storms are not within our acceptable parameters. The forecast for the afternoon was for severe storms. Not to be taken lightly anywhere and especially on Lake Champlain. A window in the morning was evident and the prospect of spending a night on the hook at Crown Point in severe weather was not appealing. So we motored on at 830 and found reasonable conditions with increasing wind. Just be be sure we were not over extending ourselves, we pulled into Point Bay Marina where we had be told had the best diesel price on the lake. $299/gallon is good, free pumpout (always appreciated). Approaching their fuel dock, the wind was strong (cant tell how strong because the mast is still down and the anemometer is on the mast thus useless….) but they provided capable dock hands and we got her set quickly. We had some thought of staying at this marina but having seen the direction of the wind it was clear they would take a direct impact from the south winds and the dock hand confirmed this. So we pushed for Safe Harbor Willsboro and watched the sky and the NWS radar.

Many of our family followers are not boaters so excuse me for describing ‘fetch’; Fetch is the distance wind can run unobstructed across water. More fetch, more impact. The impact is water is moved from the beginning of fetch to the end and waves start small and build further along distance wind can travel. Lake Champlain runs for the most part south to north and in a south wind the impact of fetch increases, pretty dramatically as it turns out….

Moving north we had a following sea with waves 2-3 feet. By Narraganset Bay standards, not a bad day, but we knew things had just begun to build and getting off the water sooner than later was a good idea. Making the turn around Hatch Point into Indian Bay headed us south directly into the wind. It was loud and near our defined limits, but both crew and boat were capable. Arriving at the marina and having 3 dock hands help secure our lines ensured a safe 2 day stay.

So as we tightened the lines and deployed the fenders against the forecasted severe weather for the night, we decided it was time to break out some lovely docktail presents we had received and enjoy a well deserved Margarita( actually plural as we are not boating tomorrow!)

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