Big Lake Trip

My lovely wife and I headed up to a 9 mile long wilderness lake for the day. Like an idiot, I left my camera sitting on the kitchen table. Just to round out my forgetfulness, the bag with the water bottles and coffee was forgotten in the truck. In my defense, the black flies were fierce, and we were in a hurry to get out on the water where the wind would blow them away.

The road to the lake was flooded in a half dozen places. I've seen it that bad only once before, but that was after snow melt. Traffic was still getting through, so we made it to the lake. The water level looked at least 3 feet deeper than normal. Since it's normally a pretty shallow lake, that worked to our advantage.

We were about a half mile out on the lake when I noticed the coffee was missing. That's when we took stock and decided to keep on sailing. There's a two gallon water jug stored on the sailboat, so we had that to drink. One the things I did remember was the cooler, so we had food and wine. If you've got wine and chocolate, it's not roughing it.

We launched from the south end of the lake. The wind was from the north, so we had to tack the whole way. It took four hours to get to the other side. I know people who have a camp on the north end of the lake. They were there for the holiday weekend. We did a picture prefect landing, totally under sail, and there was someone to actually see us do it. Glad they didn't see our goofy launch at the other end of the lake.

They invited us for a couple drinks. Our dog got to run around with my buddy's son. After about an hour we decided to head south while the wind was still blowing. We did a beautiful launch from their dock, totally under sail.

It took less than 2 hours to get back. Big difference when the wind is in the right direction. It was a darn good day on the water. When I told my wife that I'd forgotten my camera, she said: no problem, we'll just have to come back again soon.

That's a plan I can live with.

-Sixbears