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................................--- McPhee Reservoir -- Cortez, CO ---
................................................................................--- April 2009 ---
This was our first sailing experience for the two of us and the first time out with the Mac. What a trip it was. I'll try and hit the highlights and let the pictures kind of fall into place along the way. They are in order as taken, but the story might be a little behind or ahead of them at times. Also a few days before this trip we had tried to take the boat out to Lake Powell, 90 miles west of us, but the Jeep motor decided to blow up 30 miles out of town on that trip. It wasn't unexpected as I had a new crate motor sitting in the shop waiting to go in. I just thought the old motor had one more trip in it. After that failure to launch, Shawn, a good friend, offered us his '98 Chevy pickup to use and we took him up on it and decided to try McPhee Reservoir 80 miles away north of Cortez, Colo.
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Here we are nearing the boat ramp at McPhee. We did most of our 5 days in the lake arm that goes to the left (west) in the picture. It is a wide arm at 90 degrees to the main lake channel. The main channel is about 1500 to 2000 feet wide and about 8 miles long. We felt the 1 mile by 2 mile side arm gave us the most room for error since we had never sailed before.
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We pulled past the ramp that had one dock in the water (barely visible at lower right) and over into the parking lot to set the mast/boom and sails up on the boat. That went a little slow, but ok as we had done it a couple times at home. We rigged the jib, but kept it in it's bag tied to the pulpit.
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Next, we backed down and put the Mac in the water and the fun began. In this picture we are actually getting ready to pull it back out. We had put it in with the trailer over away from the dock since it is a short dock and the boat went right in the water. I pushed it back standing on the trailer tongue and then we used the bow and stern lines to pull it over to the dock next to the trailer.
I tried to start the 8 HP Honda to no avail. I'd run it at home a couple times in a bucket, but it started once and died and I felt I'd fouled the plugs with too much choke. No problem the previous owner had left plugs in a tool box and I had a plug wrench in the tools we carry on the Zodiac for the Nissan 5 HP on it. Well low and behold the Honda plug was a different size than the Nissan and the plug wrench didn't work. Normally I never leave home without a large tool box that I can fix anything with, but with the few nuts and bolts on the Mac I just took some box open end wrenches and a few other things. None of these would fit down in the plug well to remove the plug.
Ruth agreed to stay with the boat while I went to Cortez 12 miles away to get a plug wrench. No one was using the lake and if they did they could launch on the other side of the dock, so I took off for town with one of the plugs that came with the Mac. Ok an hour later and I'm back to the boat with the plug wrench. I climb aboard and tried to remove a plug. No luck, the wrench didn't fit. The extra plugs were not for the Honda. They were yet a different size than the plugs that were in the Honda and the Nissan outboards. Well I wasn't too happy with myself for not checking all of this better before this.
The Honda is a 2 cylinder and I finally got the top plug out with a 3/4 wrench at an angle and yes it was fouled with gas. I tried to clean it off and put it back in, but the motor still wouldn't start. Decision time, do we stay or go back home. We were beat, but didn't want to fail again, so we decided to put the Nissan outboard from the Zodiac on the back of the Mac. After all one of the reasons for getting it in a long shaft model was in case the Honda failed on the water we had a backup motor. We pulled the boat out of the water and took the Honda off and replaced it with the 5 HP Nissan. This wasn't the best situation as I'd just found out a week before that I had a hernia again that needed to be operated on, but I wanted to put it off until next winter and not screw up the summer. I was hurting a little, but with Ruth's help we got the Honda off and into the front seat of the pickup which doesn't lock!! We covered it with a Mexican blanket and wondered if it would be in the truck when we got back. One part of us was hoping someone might steal it.........
The Nissan started and ran great, so we were off. It was now past 5 p.m. and not much daylight was left. There was no wind and we motored about 1/2 mile down the arm of the lake and around into a semi-protected cove I'd seen from the road above. Things were good again and we were ready to spend our first night on the water after a couple months of work and anticipation.
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We dropped the Danforth anchor that we had in about 10 feet of water about 100 feet from shore and let out about that much rode. Of course I'd just read about doing all of this not too long before on the Internet, so we had no idea if we would be in the same location the next morning. I took Shush (Navajo for Bear) our 15 year old dog ashore in the Zodiac for here twice daily visit to Terra Firma. We had worried how this dog-going-to-the-bathroom-thing was going to work, but I would take her once in the morning and once in the evening and she managed, better than we could do. Once the dingy took her to shore there was no problem getting her to jump from the Mac into my arms and being lowered into the dingy. She knew it was her friend. Now getting her to go from the shore into the dingy for the trip back took a little more encouragement.
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I returned to the boat in time for an awesome sunset. We were tired and ate crackers, cheese, and fruit for dinner, which is about what we do at home as our big meal of the day is early afternoon. We slept great and really like the enlarged front v-berth. We only woke a couple times and I popped the forward hatch open and looked around and could see we were still pretty close to where we were the night before. The wind came up a little and I think we might of dragged the anchor a bit, but not much. It also got cold and the dog water out in the cockpit had ice on it in the morning. They were predicting 32-34 overnight lows while we were out.
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Almost immediately the boat was a mess. I still have a "lot" of storage to make and we had things in those rubber/plastic tubs with lids all over the boat. Here you can see the location we are trying out for the stove in the gap over the passage way forward to the v-berth. We feel this is going to be where we'll put it while cooking. I'd made a temporary location to store it the day before we went on this trip. It is easy to use from the port seat and we usually cook and do the meals together, so one person can tend to the stove while the other person prepares items on the other side. We were going to put it on a removable table in the middle of the cabin, but we really like to keep the cabin open. Also since we removed the head and moved it to the cabin there is no need to use the passage way to the v-berth except when going there to bed. After use the stove is removed from that position and is placed off to the side on a platform.
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Here Ruth is enjoying her daily morning bowl of Cherrios.....
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......... along with a cup of coffee. I had the same.
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Here is the stove in the stored position with our pots, pans and lids in tubs under it. In the future the stove will probably be stored behind the companionway ladder. The area in the picture above will become a storage compartment for food and will extend up to under the side window.
With breakfast out of the way we decided to try this sailing thing out. Well that would be a while yet. I went up to the bow and untied the anchor and tried to pull it up. Notice I said "tried". I got most of the rode into the bag, but the anchor would not budge when we were right over it. I'd read a few days before that in this situation if you just get over the anchor and tie off tight to the boat and wait a bit the boat would work the anchor loose. I tried that for about 10 minutes, but the anchor felt like it was tied to a rock. I was sure it was a tree and not a rock, so it was decision time again. For about 3 seconds I considered going down in the water, but with 47 deg. water temperature that idea quickly fled. If we cut the rode then what were we going to do for an anchor the rest of the nights or was this a go home again thing?
So a plan developed, I'd leave the boat attached to the anchor and take the free end to shore with the dingy if it would reach and then we would come back here at night and tie up to it again. So it was off to shore with the anchor rode. It made it to shore with about 6 feet to spare. I dashed up the shore to get a rock and the rode decided to retreat to the water. I won the race, but just grabbed it as it was about ready to go under. I removed the dingy bow rope and tied it to the anchor rode and found a large rock and tied to it. Then I piled other rocks on it as it wasn't that large of a rock. When you get to be 65 with an active hernia your rock carrying abilities diminish.
So back into the dingy and back to the Mac. I no sooner get on board and Ruth says "I think we are moving". Sure enough the anchor had come free with about a foot of Mancos Shale mud stuck to the top of it. Now the anchor was free, but the other end was tied to a rock on shore. I took the anchor and road to the stern and thought I've seen Mac's with their sterns up on shore. I just had to pull the boat over to shore backwards and step off the swim ladder onto dry land and untie the rode. Well this doesn't work when you forget to pull the centerboard up. First we grounded and were stuck backwards with the centerboard in the mud. After firing up the Nissan, which should have been running anyway probably, we moved forward enough to get the centerboard up.
So I was back to pulling us stern first onto land. We made it but for about 5 feet because I had failed to pull the swim ladder up and it stuck in the mud. I removed my shoes and rolled my pants up and stepped off into the mud and water. I found out that in 5 feet of 47 deg. water my toes were numb. I retrieved the rode, but now the boat was blowing out into the lake and I could hardly hold it. Finally I was able to pull it back to shore to where the swim ladder again dug in. I trudged through the water again to Ruth and a dry towel and powered out a couple hundred feet off shore to try and regroup.
Floating dead in the water as the wind was coming up we got all the anchor rode and anchor back into the anchor bag. About the time we finished my hat blew off my head and into the water. The good news was that it was floating and the bad news was it was floating away from us. The solution; just fire up the motor and go get it. About the time I was ready to yank on the starter rope I looked down and saw that the dingy tow rope had floated around the rudder and the outboard shaft. I had visions of it wrapping wildly around the prop so I was really happy about seeing it there before I pulled the starter cord. Of course now my hat was getting harder to see as it floated off into the distance.
I untied the dingy rope and got it all free and started the outboard in anticipation of retrieving my hat and took off in that direction only to realize the dingy wasn't following us. I had got the tow line free, but somehow had failed to retie it to the Mac. A big u-turn took us back to the dingy and it was reattached to the Mac. The hat was never seen again.
The dingy tow rope proved to be a problem with the rudder and outboard more than once when there was no wind and it was just floating around. I tied the dingy to the side a couple of times, but in my head I've designed a tow-bar to hook on the back of the Mac that should keep the dingy right behind us, but not into us. I hope to build that soon.
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Hey we are ready to hoist a sail or whatever sailors say, but the wind was really picking up by now. They were predicting 20-30 mph winds during the day. After a quick chat we decided to leave the jib in the bag as per the instructions we had gotten from Sam Hunter who had taken the time to write out beginner instructions for us that were a great help and I hope to post them on this site with his permission. We reefed the main down to the 2nd reef which gave us the smallest sail possible and off we went. Well that was after we were finally able to turn the boat out of the wind as it was "in the irons".
Finally we were sailing!! It was a real joy and a wonderful feeling after all of the time that had passed from that day in January when we had bought the Mac 'till this windy April day. We were able to do some broad reaches back and forth and some tacks slightly into the wind, yes we had remembered to lower the centerboard after being stuck in the mud and we had even remembered to fill the ballast tank at the dock. We sailed down the lake with the wind and remembered not to jibe, but to come around the long way if that is the right term.
........The depth finder was showing a lot of 3-4 knots like this and I did see a 5 knots every once in a while. We were really happy with how predictable and stable the Mac was, especially Ruth who doesn't really swim. She has been my enthusiastic companion through all of this and I have to thank her from the bottom of my heart for sharing this with me. It has been great for the both of us.
We tried to sail to the boat ramp just to see if we could do it, but could never get there. The waves were going into swells and Ruth wasn't feeling real hot and I wondered if the same would happen to me. We started the motor and started motor-sailing, tacking back and forth to our previous nights anchorage. About this time we noticed the Zodiac was going flat on one side. It didn't sink and later we found that one of the valves wasn't tight and after tightening it the Zodiac held air the rest of the week.
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I got the anemometer out for about 5 minutes and clocked this 25.5 mph peak wind speed during that 5 minutes.
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For us first time sailors it is hard to describe all that we were feeling, but I'm sure most of you probably remember that first time out. We won't forget it soon I'm sure.
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After returning to the previous night's mooring I worried about the anchor getting stuck again, but at least knew it would stick there and we would probably get through the night.....
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.... which promised to have higher winds and waves than the night before. Our first anchoring attempt failed this second night. The night before I had made the mistake of floating with the wind parallel to the shore and by the time I got the anchor out we were hauling ass down wind. This time we turned and went into the wind parallel to the shore watching the depth finder at the same time. Ruth was with the motor and tiller and I was up on the bow. When the depth was about right she cut the motor and I dropped anchor and we slowly started drifting backwards. This was working much better than the previous night until I noticed we were too close to shore and were drifting right into a bunch of submerged bushes. We powered ahead and I got the anchor up and we went out and made another approach, but this time a little further out and we were successful.
One thing we definitely need to get is a second anchor just in case we loose the first or need to anchor on two. This will be ordered soon. I can say that this real Danforth that came with the boat was a life saver for us on a couple windy nights. I think we drug the anchor a bit this second night also, but not much. I was trying to put out at least 10:1 of rode and I think that helped also.
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During the day and back on the hook we listened to the local radio station on the radio I had installed in the couple days we were back home between the Lake Powell fiasco and this trip.
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Ruth is what I call a "habitual crocheter" and found some free time like at anchorage to pursue one of her passions.
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Back in the same little side bay for the second night and....
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.......... Shush enjoying her limited time ashore. You can see the Mancos Shale mud that makes up the lake bed in this area under Shush.
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When I said that I thought we drug anchor a little it is because I didn't think the boat was that far out when we threw the anchor overboard, but with 100 feet or more of rode out it can swing pretty far.
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Another nice end to the day... and....
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......... the wind had finally died down for the night. We had some wind at night a couple times, but not like the daylight hours.
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When I got back to the Mac with the dog the final reward to a first day with a sail finally up was this sunset which we really enjoyed.
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Since we didn't have much of a moon during these days the nights were dark and I wish we would have had a stronger flashlight/spot light to check where the shore was in the middle of the night and if we were holding steady on the anchor. A GPS with an anchor alarm is also in the works. We both slept so well we probably would have been on some rocks before we would have awaken.
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Our 3rd day, Wed., promised great weather, but diminished winds with.....
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.... 0 to 12 mph winds predicted by the radio station. We took the reef out of the sail and ran it all the way up, but were still unsure as to our ability to handle two sails with just one day of sailing behind us. At this point we were doing well on some broad reaches.
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We headed down towards the main channel, which in the picture above goes to the left and down the dam or to the right and up to the headwaters of the lake. The wind then started to die and would be dead for 10 minutes and then build to about 12 mph for another 10 minutes and then start to die off again.
This proved to be frustrating for us. I found that I had to keep the boat at right angles to the next anticipated wind or better yet pointed away from it. If not, as soon as the wind started to pick up and I tried to pull the sail into the wind the boat would round up into it and we would be dead in the water again as the rudder was ineffective. I had recently read that to get started without using the motor to turn the boat to catch the wind you could push the boom out into the wind. I tried this and found it would push the boat backwards and then by reversing the rudder I could get the bow to start swinging around. Then I made the mistake of thinking that as soon as the bow was at right angles to the wind I could pull the sail in and take off. I found that usually didn't work. As soon as I pulled the sail in, the boat would not get enough speed for the rudder to work. The boat would round up into the wind again and go into the irons. Finally I found that as the bow came around to right angles to the wind to release the sail altogether and let it go parallel to the wind. The bow would then continue to swing around. Then I could start to pull the sail in and be easy on the tiller until I had a little speed up and regained steerage. Sometimes I gave up and just started the motor and swung the boat around and took off sailing, but I became stubborn and was determined to get a non-motor technique to work. By trial and error and practicing the above, we hardly ever stalled the boat again.
An instructor would have probably gotten us past this step a lot faster, but we were on our own. Well almost we were on our own. We had been fortunate for all the input from the guys on the Internet boards such as Sam. Also we had received a lot of help from our good friends Linda and Bill Smith who have sailed a lot in the past. They looked our Mac over in Phoenix before we bought it and also brought the boat all the way up to Utah for us. If it wouldn't of been for all of these people we would of had a really frustrating first experience instead of a very rewarding one.
One thing Bill put me onto was gibing with some degree of control over the boom. We had been warned how dangerous gibing can be and just in tacking Ruth and I had both been hit by the boom, but were getting very aware of it as the days went on. Well Bill told me that if you were gibing in light winds to start to make your turn with the rudder and quickly pull the boom into the middle of the cockpit with the mainsail control line and then once you are past center in the gibe to let it out in a control manner on the other side. This worked great when we were in light winds and I didn't think we had enough way on to tack around into the wind. Thanks Bill and everyone else that gave us pointers either directly or indirectly through their posts and web sites. By the way if you are looking for other Mac or Venture owners be sure and check out the dozens of links I have on this site ( HERE ).
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Here is the Zodiac behind the Mac and behaving. I'm glad actually that the motor wasn't on it as it would have been harder to row to shore. I have plans in my head for mounting the 5 HP on the back of the pushpit on the Mac and having a way to lower it onto either the Zodiac or replacing the Honda on the water if that would become necessary.
I can't say enough for the 5 HP Nissan. It worked great. We'd taken it out once on the Zodiac at home on a small lake and after that I ordered the smallest pitch prop for it I could find, which was a 6 pitch. On the Mac with that prop and just off idle it would run along at 2 knots and around 4 knots with about 3/4 throttle and I saw 7 knots with the motor and the sail working together tacking back to anchorage the day of the big wind. I never ran the motor wide open and we only burned a little over 1 gallon in the 5 days we were out. I would recommend this motor to anyone with this prop combo and since it took us back to anchorage into 25 mph winds feel it is strong enough for about anything.
Having said that, next winter we will be looking for a 8-9 HP outboard with electric start. At our age for safety reasons we both have to be able to start the motor in case the other had a problem and the rope pull is just too hard for Ruth and my day is coming.
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In the above picture you can barely make out the boat ramp just over the yellow bag on the bow.
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A view of the mountains from down near the main channel. That area of the mountains is where Telluride, Colorado is and I'm sure there were a lot of people up there skiing at the same moment we were out on this beautiful lake. In 5 days we probably only saw 6-7 boats on the lake and they were never within a half mile of us. On the windy day we saw one sail boat that was probably about 16-18 feet long about 3/4 of a mile away down near the boat ramp after we were back on anchor for the night. They must of come out for the evening as we never saw them again.
We found out that the Forest Service had just put the dock back into the water a couple days before we showed up and were working on another one while we were there. I really believe we were the only ones on the lake overnight during those 5 days.
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Well quiet water no anchor problems and our 3rd and last night on our now familiar anchorage. I'd put rocks in the water so that I could beach the Zodiac without stepping into the mud the first night, but the next morning couldn't find them. Finally about the third day I realized the lake was going up about a foot vertical or so each day due to the lake filling with snow melt off the mountains. In this location it went up the shore on an angle about 20 feet or more in 3 days.
We were going to just go out for 3 days and return on Wed. but here it was Wed. night and we were out for another night, so the plan changed to sail down to the ramp the next morning and take out.
Taking off the next morning we were determined to sail to or at least near the dock, but couldn't do it. We could sail down there and start tacking to it, but couldn't quite get things right. The wind would start and stop and come from about anywhere in a 90 deg. angle between the south and west. The dock was south west of the part of the main channel we had managed to sail to requiring us to tack over to it.
So morning came and went and our tacking was not going very well. Finally we started getting the handle on getting the boat underway after the wind died down and then came up again. Also we were finally able to start tacking better into the wind, but it was getting later now. We were having fun and I hated to quit so I asked Ruth if she minded staying out for yet another day. She was enjoying this as much as I was and maybe even more, so of course she said "we are retired we don't have to be home", so another night on the water was in the works.
We passed the ramp and started to work our way up into the wind and down the narrower main channel in the direction of the head waters. Not a lot of wind, but we were making progress in the direction of our choice and doing pretty well. Ruth was manning the tiller a lot now and as she kept us on course I quickly ........
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..... went up to the bow and released the jib from it's bag and started pulling it out without consulting her first. We hadn't had the jib up to this point and she was a little excited about doing this now, as we were about ready to anchor for the night. I had a few butterflies myself, but I pulled the jib up with the halyard and then it took a few moments to figure out what to do with the two control lines, but that seemed to fall into place and be pretty obvious.
A new moment for us. Sailing just like the big boys with two sails up and not just our wimpy main. The boat picked up speed in the light wind and it was a neat experience. The Genoa and for sure the Spinnaker that came with the Mac will have to await another day.
........Here Ruth is taking us to our final mooring......
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... of this trip in this quiet little bay just off the lake. I decide to try using the lines to hold us at anchor this time. We released the anchor in about 10 feet of water and it seemed to hold the boat with just 15-20 feet of rode out since there was no real wind.
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Using the dingy I took the bow line about 100 feet ashore and tied it around a big log and then took the stern line a couple hundred feet ashore on the other side and tied it to a tree that a beaver had felled. This of course was another first for us. While placing the lines I saw a number of wild turkey and Elk tracks, but we didn't have the pleasure of seeing the animals that made them.
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Here you can see we were just barely off the main channel. This night the boat didn't rock at all and Ruth wasn't too happy about that as she said she slept way better with the boat rocking all night. Other than feeling a little sick that second day in the rolling water she and I were fine the whole time. I'd worried some that we had spent all this money and time and if we were plagued by feeling sick on the boat it wasn't going to be a good ending, but so far we are both fine and loving it.
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Besides some of our other earlier problems we had two more problems during the trip. One was after using the stove in the boat just one or two times it quit working. The regulator where the bottle screws on stopped letting gas through, thus no flame. By the time I got it working I had pretty much butchered the regulator and decided it wasn't safe to use as the flames were much larger than when it was working. It was lucky that a few weeks back I had decide to mount the BBQ on the pushpit even though at the time I kind of felt I should have been spending my time doing something else.
Well the BBQ saved our butts. Besides doing burgers on it we were able to heat water and cook our other meals on it.
The other problem was that the CPAP machine I use for sleep apnea blew it's fuse the first night and I didn't have another. I was able to find a screw that I could break off to the right lenght and put it in where the fuse was supposed to be so I had a complete circuit again.
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Behind Shush is the fuel tank that should be mounted on the raised transom of the dingy, but since we were using the Nissan it was on the Mac and worked pretty well there. I was going to pull the line and bulb off of it and put it on the 6 gallon Honda tank, but never did and tied the Honda tank up on the bow.
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Our fourth and last sunset on this our first sailing adventure. Like the ever changing challenges we had faced each day, every evening ended with a different and wonderful transition from day to night making this a wonderful experience for us.
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Friday morning came with no wind and rain expected the next day. We motored about 1 1/2 miles back to the dock under very little power not really wanting this to end listening and watching the Canadian Geese that were in that part of the lake.
By the time we got to the dock at the ramp there was a little wind coming in from the west side of the dock, so I decided to use it and dock on that side. I'll probably never be able to have such a successful docking again. I came in at a slight angle and at just a knot or so and then put the motor in neutral and stepped up to the bow and onto the dock as the boat slightly bumped it. Wow I though that was easy, but like I said it will probably never go according to plan again. We plan on getting Ruth more time on the motor, so she can handle it during all of that period in the future. She isn't that tall and it is a long reach for her down to the forward-neutral-reverse lever, but she can just barely reach it and now handles the motor when we pull the anchor up in the morning with me up on the bow.
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I went and got the truck and trailer (yes the Honda was still in it) and backed down into the water on the far side of the dock. Ruth took the stern line and I took the bow line and we pushed the boat back out into the lake. I then pulled it right up into the trailer with the bow line with Ruth controlling the stern with the other line. The mods to the trailer worked perfect and this is all the further I had to back into the water even with the ballast tank full. I was able to pull it far enough forward with the bow line that I could stand on the dry trailer tongue and hook the winch strap to the bow and the bow roller allowed the boat to be easily winched right up....
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........into the "V" block at the front of the trailer. With the vertical bottom side bunks it sat right down on the main bunks dead center just like in the shop......
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......... ready to be towed away. We were very happy.
We couldn't of been happier with our first trip. We learned a lot, had a great time, great weather, sore muscles and the such, but anxious already for our next trip.
We used a little over 1 gallon of gas over the 5 days, so sailed or at least got blown around the lake a lot. We also only used about 5 gallons of water total and came home with enough food for another 2 weeks of meals and found out that we of course took way too much stuff with us. The days went by too fast and another bonus was we slept way better than we do at home.
We really liked this lake and I'm sure we will go back many times. The large part where we spent most of our time is a great sailing area and from what we have been told it is really beautiful in the deep canyon down by the dam. We will head there the next time. With the limited time we had using the used Nissan I was leary about heading down there the first trip as we might not of been able to sail back with our limited experience. If we would have had motor problems it would not of been good. If any of you are ever in this area I would for sure stop and sail or check out McPhee.
Our advice to anyone reading this that has been thinking of getting a sailboat........don't think anymore, go out and get one and get sailing. You can do it and have a wonderful time. Just be sure it is a Mac ;-)
May the wind be with you,
Ruth and Sum
