Living on the lake there are a few things to do before the snow flies. My son-in-law gave me a hand a few days ago pulling the swim raft onto shore. That went fairly well, but it’s certainly not a one person job. I’m glad I had help.
Thursday’s plan was to pull the boat off the lake. That didn’t go quite as well. It was a warm day for mid October in New Hampshire’s North Country -around 70. Seemed like a perfect day for it. My lovely wife and I planned on one more afternoon of sailing.
I’d moved the trailer and tow vehicle to the boat ramp, so that was ready. Unfortunately the wind picked up a lot more than predicted. The 3 to 5 mph predicted winds turned into wind strong enough to lean the sailboat right down past its gunwales. That’s with much reduced sails. After a while it was no longer much fun to be sailing.
Unfortunately the wind was blowing across the whole lake to the boat ramp. There were whitecaps. That did not look like it would be much fun trying to load the sailboat. We decided to put that off until later in the week.
By then the wind was blowing so hard I was concerned about being able to drop the mainsail. In the end I pulled the boat right up next to shore where some trees blocked most of the wind. Then I dropped the sail in record time. After securing it we motored the whole way across the lake to our beach. It’s back on the mooring.
We have some rain in the forecast, but after that I’ll just motor directly to the boat ramp and pull it out. The long range forecast has some decent weather predicted. One year I actually had to pull the boat in snowstorm. That’s something I definitely do not want to repeat.
-Sixbears
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