Lake Champlain - August 24, 2011

We returned to the USA on Saturday, August 20th and anchored that night. On Sunday we cruised to Shelburne's Shipyard on the Vermont side of the lake just south of Burlington. This morning the yard fixed the problem that had been causing the noise under the hull; turned out to be a Spurs line cutter part that had come loose and fallen off. Had to remove the remaining parts of the Spurs and won't be able to replace them until we have the boat hauled again next spring. Also discovered another problem and Shelburne's is ordering the necessary part and will replace it before we leave the lake in a couple of weeks. In the process they realigned the engine and shaft.

All is going well. Tonight we're anchored in a small bay (along with a dozen other boats - mostly sail) in a small bay south of Shelburne Shipyard.

On Tuesday, August 23rd, we cruised a short distance north to Burlington to the temporary dock at the Boathouse Marina, went ashore for a short time to buy a few groceries and had lunch at the restaurant at the marina. We then departed and headed north past Plattsburgh to anchor in a small bay at Nichols Point on the Vermont side of the lake. We were planning on cruising southeast to Plattsburgh on Wednesday, the 24th where we had hoped to meet some relatives for a couple of days of cruising, but high winds on the lake (gusting to 30 MPH) forced us to turn around after about 30 minutes and return to the anchorage. The forecast for Thursday isn't any better; in fact, it may be worse with winds forecast to be gusting to 35 MPH. So our plans are on hold right now while we're sitting at anchor in this small bay along with 6-7 other boats, most of which came in this morning after we had already been out and turned around. 

By Thursday night the winds are forecast to die down, so hopefully we will be able to meet up in Plattsburgh on Friday morning and still have a day of cruising this beautiful area.

Here are a few pictures from our time in the anchorage, showing:

This is the track laid down by our handheld GPS during the high winds from the south while we were in the anchorage. North is up. The lower "blob" shows how we moved back and forth, side to side, in the wind with 100 feet of scope out; when the winds were forecast to increase, we added an additional 50 feet of chain and our position moved 50 feet to the north, shown by the upper "blob." This photo was taken on the morning of the 25th of August.

Compare these tracks to the tracks on the same GPS when we were treated to tropical storm Irene's winds (in the next blog post).

This beautiful double rainbow showed up evening of the 25th. It stretched from this location in the water, to directly alongside Sanderling on the other end of the rainbow. (We didn't even find a golden anchor.)

A short time later, we had this beautiful sunset, sailboat and all:

On the 26th we crossed the lake to Plattsburgh where we met Caroline and Melissa at the town dock, after getting the holding tanks pumped out at the Plattsburgh Boat Basin. We crossed the lake, heading by the anchorage where we'd just spent the past several days, thru "The Gut" and then the draw bridge on the eastern side of The Gut, to St. Albans Bay where we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening talking and catching up on our families. Judy and I spent some time going over the charts looking for "hurricane holes" where we could wait out whatever Hurricane Irene was going to throw at us.

On the 27th, with Irene looming large on the horizon for the Lake Champlain valley and amid warnings from NOAA to prepare for near hurricane force winds, we motored back to Plattsburgh and said goodbye to Caroline and Melissa (they were driving to Chicago), and headed out to find a place that we felt would be safe from Irene's wrath.

We chose to motor back to The Gut and stay in a small area, Hibbard Bay, on its north side during Irene's passing. Turns out it was a good decision.

See our next post for more details on dealing with Irene.