--- Tried Sailing and Day Ended With a Big Wind ---
......................................--- Sunday July 26, 2009 ---
Night's Anchorage: West of Kokanee Park Ramp by the Kokanee Park Beach.
( N. 49o 36.493' -- W. 117o 06.855' ) Sailed about 3 miles -- motored about 3 miles
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The next morning dawned with a clear sky and.........
........
.... some sailboats on the lake and not in their slips. We decided to try sailing west up the arm towards Nelson.
........
We again sailed west past the beach at the park where the shallow water extends way away from shore. We almost made it past the narrower deep channel when the winds died entirely. We motored about 1 mile west into the next large part of the lake with the hope of wind there since we we would be further from the nearby mountain that might be presenting us with a wind shadow.
After drifting around for a couple hours with no wind materializing we again fired up the Honda and motored back past the park to the area near the marina. About then some wind picked up and we started sailing in light winds. There were....
........
..........6 other sailboats further down the lake that appeared to be together. The winds picked up some, but not that much and they all headed to the marina. That should of told us something as we were wondering why they headed in just when the winds seemed to be getting good.
Well about the time they made it to their slips the wind really came up and within a matter of minutes we were in .......
........
......more wind than we cared to sail in. We headed for a new anchorage between the ramp and beach area about 200 yards west of the ramp. All the other sailboats had lowered their sails and then motored over to the marina. We followed suit by lowering our sails right after we started the outboard. This proved to not be a good move in these conditions and we should have know better as we had read about having your sails ready just in case you needed them.
Well as we neared the intended anchorage on the shallow shelf the outboard died and we drifted towards shore and the shallow water. The water was about 10 feet deep and getting shallower. I tried to start the outboard, but it would have no part of that. We gave up and rushed to raise the main. The wind was really up now with whitecapping waves and I was having a hard time raising the main with the sail catching on the spreaders and stays.
Finally we got the sail up and started to make headway into the wind. I asked Ruth what the depth was and she said 8 feet. I thought why not just toss the anchor now instead of sailing out and back in, so that is what we did and in retrospect should of done right when the outboard died in the 10 feet of water. The anchor went to the bottom along with 30 feet of chain and 65 feet of line. It caught and we came to a halt in 6 feet of water about 75 feet from shore. I could of still let out more rode if needed, but it seemed to hold in about the worst wind and waves we had seen to this point with the exception of that bad day back on Priest Lake.
........
This wasn't a protected anchorage with the wind driving the waves from the east for a couple miles into us. The boat's motion in the waves sitting in the cockpit wasn't too bad, but going below and up to the V-Berth to get the camera got my attention. I wondered if this might be our first seasick experience for one or the other of us or both of us. Luckily after an hour or so the wind and waves diminished as they had every other night we had been here.
We talked a little if we should consider returning to the states and a lake somewhere between here and the Bonneville Salt Flats where we had to be the the 6th or 7th of August to setup the pits for Hooley's record holding Studebaker, which runs about 250 mph faster than the hull speed of our Mac. We loved the scenery where we were and the people were great. Almost everyone that approaches you with a speed boat slows down till they are past and then speeds up again. We didn't experience anything like that on Priest Lake and at least 1/2 the boats that are on the lake here are sailboats and there is nowhere near the traffic on the lake as at Priest. Still it seemed like either there was no wind or more than we were comfortable with at this point in our sailing careers. The weather system that was marching along west to east on the U.S./Canada border right over us was suppose to change to a little gentler one in a few days. We decided to give it a chance and see what happened the next day when we were going to drive into Nelson. Our Net10 cell phone had no service in Canada and we needed to check in by phone with a couple people and try and get on the Internet to pay some bills.
