Two Welsford designed boats (Navigator and Pathfinder) on a Chequamegon Bay Outing

so here we are on the southern tip of shehuamigan bay of lake superior just outside the city of ashland which is right over that way it's been blowing 20 to 40 for a while out there but it looks like it's gonna come down this afternoon and uh be in the 15 to 25 mile per hour range for wind bill land and i are gonna go take a sail up on the eastern shore put in on the eastern shore hoping for a little bit cover up there as we start our ventures and then expect the wind to come down just a little bit well today we're up on lake superior again in the uh schwammeggen bay and that's uh this part here of lake superior near the apostle islands there's a track where we ended up going for the day and uh give you idea how the boat was tacking so the original plan for the weekend was to get out with my friend mark on his 40-foot valley and it's a beautiful boat he bought been sitting in a marina for about five years with about three feet of water inside of it and he spent a good 10 years refitting it and uh it's it's it is a beautiful boat sale a totally different experience from what i have in my boat but [Music] still a good time all right so bill and i are down at the uh rod and gun what is it the northern wisconsin rod and gun club they have a beautiful little launch out here on the edge of chewaumagan bay that's where we're heading it's fun to get out with a fellow sailor in a wellsford boat so bill and i have been doing this on and off the last few years so we're expecting it to start out a little bit exciting out there i'm gonna start with the double reef in and i find when it's blown really hard i keep the jib rolled up sail on the main with just the mizzen up just enough i keep it really spree slack but uh it helps when if there's if it's shifty it still helps keep me pointed upwind if there's a big unexpected blow but i don't rely on it too much for power and that seems just helps balance a little get off the dock a little bit give myself a little bit rum to get everything set up bill's going to be heading this way in a minute okay so i mean is set up with the reef two reefs a lot of downhill pressure i've got the uh snotter the snot are snug keep the sail flat for now until we see what we got time to turn the motor off and do some sailing it's pretty bouncy out here the um the wind is such that there's some big puffs that come through and i could put the jib out right now but i need to be paying attention in those puffs the nice thing about this setup is i'm i'm still kind of sorting out the boat uh we're moving along at you know two and a half three knots and um when those buffs come the missing just you know i don't already feel it i feel a little bit but um the boat is definitely safe without 100 of my attention [Applause] so we're heading up along the edge of uh this sloo uh there's some back water up here uh around uh this point up ahead there i hope he can still make out bill he's quite a ways ahead of me in the rough chop the paths finder i think the little longer length um helps him punch through that a little better um sailing along at four and a half knots on average here so making decent time trying to head upwind bill and i are sitting in about four feet of water and dude what's the name of this slow kagogan slew yeah so there's wild rice beds up near the end of here uh the yep bad river reservation the uh right the charts say this is about four feet of water we're in um haven't thrown anything overboard to see but we're just uh floating on the floating on the breeze it's still blowing pretty good out here but not much of a fetch so it's a little quieter out in the bay it's still kicking up a little bit around the point there doesn't look like there's been much activity here for a while only way out to these uh cabins out here is by boat long island up there and nice sparkly water over here and bill desperately trying to catch up it's settled into a beautiful afternoon doing about four and a half knots we're gonna head over to the la pointe lighthouse there's a two lighthouses on sand island ahead of us here one's at the very end of it near the town of la pointe and the other is called la um lighthouse and that's actually a mile or so closer to us about dead ahead here we're sailing along up to the beach here and about oh it looks like two feet of water it's probably more like eight lakes berry water is pretty darn clean and clear easy to see through it's really uh disconcerting when you look down though and you see big boulders and they look like they're a foot away and they're actually 20 feet down just gonna run up on the beach here and uh hike across i can hear the waves on the other side pretty nice and calm here i've got my i kind of pulled my bum end up makes it easy because when i drop the main now it it'll stay up above my head bill's out there wrapping some things up getting his mane down i'd use the anchor buddy but um looks really calm on the shore here so i'm not worried about anything getting washed up into the center board case which was why i got an anchor buddy in the first place all right i gotta check and see how deep it is here oh my gosh i can't hit the bottom with this so i've got a good five feet of water probably more well here comes bill i got rid of my power too soon i had to paddle in the first or the last little bit there [Applause] so this is long island it goes like i said out to the city of la pointe and then all the way back into the mainland it's i don't know how many miles long it is but it's a long thin strip of sand between chihuahuan bay and lake superior and the apostle rest of the apostle islands so here we are on the lake side of long island wind's been coming out of the west and the north north is pretty much straight across here so it's had a chance to work up some waves looks like it'd be a beautiful day out there i don't know if you can see but down this way there's a bunch of sailboats out uh city of bayfield is on the far shore and down this beach is around the corner is a la pointe lighthouse we're not gonna walk there today [Music] time to head home [Applause] about a five mile run home beam to broad reach beautiful evening sale we found a little um look like a baby snapping turtle on the beach over there that was kind of interesting so i was thinking about that um the sailing's great but sometimes it's just the places you end up going and the things you end up finding along the way that make this kind of sailing so so much fun well i've got my spot on the horizon that i'm aiming towards just kind of standing up with the tiller against my leg keeping me going the right direction i uh friend told me you know hey as we go older get older here we got a doctor says i gotta work on balance so i figure i'm doing my part so far i've stayed in the boat so like if you're uh trying to get maximum boat speed sitting in the very back of the boat leaned up against the transom and just chillaxing nose of the boat a little bit too much out of the water yeah probably losing part of a knot but it sure is relaxing and i love the sound [Applause] [Applause] [Music] so we're gonna do a wind behind me sail to the dock um we'll see how that goes big mainsail comes down chip gets rolled up going under mizzen and hook the dock usually works great you're not vidi i'm not videotaping that back at the dock bill's getting his boat out following them up here soon what a gorgeous sail our sail back from long island i spent a lot of time over five knots and uh just a nice fun sail great to get out and spend time with a friend and nine hours later we're back where we started about an hour drive home from here as the sun said stop had to cook dinner in ashland before heading back to superior

Channel: Tim Ingersoll

Views: 21,026

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Id: L_5zDq1xlF8

Length: 16min 13sec (973 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022