.--- Ruth Goes in the Water & Anchor Near Ferry ---
.............................................--- Sunday August 2, 2009 ---
Night's Anchorage: South side of lake just west of cable ferry.
( N. 49o 36.107' -- W. 117o 04.074' ) Sailed about 8 1/2 miles -- motored about 2 miles
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Despite the thunder off in the distance we had no rain last night, but I believe that the lightening we saw last night or the night before might have started a forest fire. Smoke came down the lake valley so dense that for a while you couldn't see any of the mountains to the east or the shoreline 1 mile away on the south side of the lake.
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This condition lasted all day, but we didn't go ashore to ask what was happening. It was the thickest smoke I've ever seen that wasn't right at a fire itself and I was in Wyoming and Yellowstone the years of the fires there. One thing that made it so bad early in the day was it was dead calm. After breakfast we motored out into........
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..... the lake a few hundred yards and waited and waited for the day's winds. Finally I asked Ruth if she wanted to go in the water for her first swimming lesson and she said yes, but preferably not right at the public beach at the park as it was quickly filling on this holiday weekend. That beach is almost a mile long. Further to the west down the same shoreline and still in the park was a shorter sandy beach. We fired up the Honda that was running fine now and motored the 1 1/2-2 miles to near that beach, passing the ................
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......... small cove where a few nights before we had the scare with the bad weather and the big rock in the water. The beach we were going to use was at the narrows where we had hit bottom with the centerboard the 1st or 2nd day here. We went down the main channel and turned to starboard towards the beach with the centerboard up this time. Ruth watched the depth finder and I watched the bottom from the bow. We crossed over from the 50 feet of water to 6 feet in a boat length and then I tossed the Bruce in and let out the rode. We were over the shelf and you could see the deep water just behind the boat and the shallower water right under us. We were still about 300 yds. from shore though. Ruth exchanged her self-inflating PFD for a foam one and I put one on also. With both of us using an oar as a paddle we made our way to shore. Then with the Zodiac on the beach we started back into the shallow water. The water wasn't that cold, but for us it was initially cold. After some false starts Ruth was in the water and on her back with the PFD holding her head up. Remember she doesn't swim and the last time she was in the water was when she was about 12 or 13. I'm sworn not to give her age out, but that was some time ago as I will let it slip that she is some distance past 60. So just getting use to laying on her back with water in her ears and some powerboat waves coming in took some real courage on her part. Within a few minutes she was learning how to do a modified back stroke to move herself towards shore. She did great and I was proud of her. The goal when we are at Lake Powell the 1st of September and in warmer water is to make her a lot more comfortable in the water. She is a fast learner when she takes something new on so I'm confident she will feel better about being in the water soon.
Back on the Kera Jane we fixed lunch and as we were eating there was one or more schools of Kokanee Salmon surfacing just a few yards aft of the boat. Some young fellas fishing in a small boat nearby said that the fish were about ready to start spawning up the streams that feed into the lake.
By this time the wind was up but the smoke was still thick in the valley. We decided the wind was right to try sailing off anchor, which was something we had only done a couple times. We had the main up and the jib ready to haul up. Ruth was on the tiller and I pulled us to the anchor and pulled it up with the main luffing in the wind. As soon as the anchor was up and in its storage tube on the bow I hoisted the jib and Ruth pulled one of the jib sheets in so that the wind hit the jib and pushed the bow around and we moved right off the shelf into the deeper water. Then Ruth pulled the main sheet in some and the main caught the wind and we were off in a tack down the lake to the east. I went below and remembered this time to lower the centerboard. Actually the Mac will tack into the wind with it up as we have found by accident more than once when we forgot to lower it.
We tacked east back and forth in the narrows with the shallow shelf off to port. As we were doing this two different motorboats with young kids in them tried to cut across the shallow shelf by the swimming area, no doubt trying to impress someone on shore. They ran aground on the shelf probably 1/8 mile or more from shore impressing no one, but providing some entertainment. They got out of their boars in less than kneed deep water and pushed and pulled until they finally freed their boats after considerable effort on their part.
About the time we were going to break free of the narrows and tack into the wider part of the lake we passed a smaller, probably 22-24 foot, sailboat that was near the shore on the south side of the lake. They were messing with their foresail as we worked by them on a tack. About 5 minutes later as we were just making our first long tack they came by us on our starboard side like we were anchored to the bottom. Up to this point we had thought we were doing pretty good sailing, but they showed us that we still had a lot to learn. They were flying a larger genoa and we had our smaller jib on so for now that explained it all to us.
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The wind was about perfect for us. Tacking into it we did have some extended 4+ knot periods as we sailed east and that felt good. We sailed 8 1/2 miles on the GPS with a 2 1/2 mph average, most of it tacking to the east towards the east end of this part of the arm towards the cable ferry. The mountain tops (arrows) down by the "big lake" were barely visible through the smoke.
Near the ferry we spotted a possible anchorage just north of the south shore that was protected from the east winds by a shoreline that headed north towards the narrows. We headed over there first on the jib and main and then when the spot looked good we doused the jib and let the main out some to kill some speed. We then drifted towards the shore at a knot or so. Ruth read off the bottom depths and when we were in 15 feet of water and about 150 feet or so from shore the anchor went to the bottom followed by about 105 feet of rode. We came to a halt and settled onto our anchorage not too far away.......
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...... from houses along the shoreline. Just to make sure we couldn't run into the shore if the wind shifted I took a line ashore and pulled the stern around in that direction. The closest I could get the boat to shore was about 30 feet from the shore. Just as I finished doing this a water snake came swimming towards me and shore on the top of the water. When he was about 10 feet from me he raised his head and about 10 inches of his body above the water and spotted me and the shore line above his head. That was too much for him and he quickly went underwater and disappeared.
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Feeling good about the anchorage I took the inflatable back to the Kera Jane and picked up Ruth. We went back to shore for a short walk along the rock filled beach and then returned to the boat for supper and finally bed with the smoke haze tinting the sky red as the day came to a close.
