.--- Sailed To Nelson & Motored Back After Bridge Scare ---
.......................................--- Wednesday July 29, 2009 ---
Night's Anchorage: South side of Lake about 5 miles east of Nelson.
( N. 49o 32.805' -- W. 117o 14.463' ) Sailed about 5 miles -- motored about 5 miles
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Wednesday morning began a little late for us as we finally emerged from bed after 8 a.m.. I checked the wind and there was still a light wind out of the east. With the bridge at Nelson in sight and pretty much a straight shot down the lake running with the wind it was an easy decision to get off anchor and under sail and then eat breakfast.
I moved the dingy from its night time berth along side the Mac back to its tow bar position at the back of the horizontal swim ladder. Except for one earlier incident towing the dingy on the tow bar has been a trouble-free experience and will be the way we tow it from here on out. After tending to the dingy the rudder was lowered. A couple lines that we made now make it a snap to either have the rudder in the down position or up and centered, which is the way we keep it on anchor so that we don't have to worry about it getting grounded as we swing on anchor.
The wind was coming from a nice direction to sail off of anchor, but we played it safe and fired up the Honda that was now running fine after new plus and a carb adjustment for this altitude. The main went up just in case the outboard did die and the Genoa was ready to be pulled up also. I pulled us over the anchor with the anchor rode and as I pulled the anchor off bottom Ruth flicked the Honda into forward, gave it a little gas and headed for open water as I finished putting the anchor rode in its bag and dropped the Bruce into the ABS pipe on the pulpit. I finished by wrapping the first of the chain behind the anchor around the port side and center cleats to stop if from going over the side while sailing.
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Once we were out a few hundred yds. the outboard was stopped and we started running towards the bridge on the main alone. With Ruth on the tiller I went below and fixed our standard cereal with sliced bananas. We decided that since we were sailing into waters that had a lot of shallow water that extended well towards the center of the lake it was best to forego firing up the stove and making coffee and have both of us on dec.
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The channel markers in this part of the lake were getting confusing but we managed to stay in water at least 25 feet deep on the run to the bridge. 25 feet sounds like a lot, but the other day we found we could go from 50 feet to 7 feet in a boat's length here. Near the bridge we saw another sailboat on the water and shortly after that the water went back to 90+ feet according to the depth finder.
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At this point we were on the outskirts of Nelson and it didn't take long and............
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..........we were at the bridge and I didn't know how high the bottom of it was from the water. Driving over it it looked to be a long ways down to the water, but looking down usually looks further than looking up.
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As we got closer I started to loose my confidence that we would easily clear the its bottom. I asked Ruth what she thought and she seemed surprised that I didn't know exactly how high it was above the water and how high our mast was. I knew neither accurately.
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Now we were only a hundred yards of finding out if we would clear.
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At about 50 feet I chickened out and brought the Mac hard about 180 degrees with us between the two major spans that are quite far apart and that support the center of the bridge. Bringing the Mac around 180 degrees was a really stupid thing to do as now were in the irons right at the bridge pointed away from it, but floating under it with the winds help. I tried to get the bow to swing around so the main would set and carry us away on a tack, but without the help of the genoa it was a lost cause.
So with the Mac being pushed by the wind we drifted back under the bridge and saw we had a least 15-20 feet of clearance between the top of the mast and the bottom of the bridge. Fear makes you do stupid things, but we were save and I felt somewhat foolish as by now if I hadn't of brought us around into the wind we would of been well past the bridge. Instead of that we had a new problem. We were drifting right back at an angle towards one of the huge footings/supports that hold the bridge up and it looked like we were going to hit it. I knelt down in the cockpit, pulled the choke on the Honda and gave the starter rope a tug and thankfully it came to life. I pushed the choke off before it died, blipped the throttle to clear it out, shifted to forward, gave it some gas and came hard about on the tiller. We cleared the abutment by 5-10 feet on the starboard side.
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With the bridge behind us we kept the main up, but ran on the outboard about 1/4 mile down the lake past.......
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........................ more of the east end of town towards......
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..........a dock at probably the nicest hotel in town. The wind was rising along with the waves that had 3/4 miles to build before getting to us. We didn't really want to try docking under these conditions and the couple likely places that we might of anchored at were clogged with boats on moorings what we would probably swing into if we did anchor. We didn't really need anything on shore and just wanted to go to ashore mainly to say we did and to get a nice lunch.
With the wind picking up and the anchor/docking problem we decided to put our tail between our legs, or in this case our sail between our legs and proceed back to our previous night's anchorage. I went forward and took the genoa off the forestay and replaced it with the smaller jib in case we needed it and we motored back the 5 miles to our anchorage. As we arrived so............
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..........did a train that didn't sound near as frightening during the daytime while wide awake. We could of tacked our way back, but that would of meant reefing the main down and a bunch of tacks in shallow water into the increasing wind and waves. So for one of the first times on the trip us 2 mid 60 year olds took the easy way out and motored back.
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Once the winds died we took the Zodiac ashore and .......
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....took a walk in the forest along the .....
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........train tracks (arrow) until we got tired of contributing blood to the local mosquito population that calls this part of the world home. We returned to the boat pretty tired.
We have mixed feeling about this lake. The wind can up so fast here that for us at this point in our sailing career with less than 30 days on the water and no training, and operating on a learn as you go program it is a little daunting. The plan will be to still stay for another 5 days before we have to leave for the Bonneville salt, but be a little more selective when we sail and when we anchor.
