Day 9
Begin: Bay North of Five Mile Point Lighthouse (NY)
End: Valcour Island (NY)
I awoke day 9 to the sounds of waves gently hitting the bow of the boat, something I had not heard in awhile. I got up and took a look out the window, it was a nice day with a gentle breeze coming from the south/south east, which formed a very slight chop. I decided that since I wanted to sail, and knew it would be slower than motoring that I should start sailing now. One advantage about being on the lake it that I could use our auto steering device. I never would trust something like this on the canal, but on the wide open lake it works nicely. Therefore I started out, going a very fast 4 mph, but at least we were moving and it did not cost us anything! Leila got up and we had breakfast, the wind was slowly picking up as well as changing from a south-east breeze to a south-west breeze.
The wind eventually became strong enough to support the spinnaker. With the large spinnaker up we make great time, going faster than while on motor (7-8 mph, yee haw!). I was having a blast, I love sailing on the spinnaker and was going to take advantage of it as long as I could. I jibed the boat back and forth many times as the wind would not come from the south-east or south-west for more than about 10 minutes.
The wind continued to increase and eventually the spinnaker had to some down as we kept turning past 40 degrees and I was afraid of breaking something. I put up the genoa and which was still too much in some of the gusts, but at least this as more manageable, though by afternoon we switched to the jib for a few hours.
We made no stops today, rather just enjoyed a great breeze. As we traveled north there were more boats on the lake, especially sailboats. We decided that we would make it to Valcour Island tonight and Leila’s family would meet us on their boat. The wind eventually died down and we ended up motoring the last 5 miles in order to make it at a reasonable time. We did about 50 miles today, but it went by pretty quickly as we went faster on sail by motor, as well as we used the auto pilot while the breeze was light in the morning.
Vermont mountains while sailing.
We met with Leila’s family on the boat and Leila left to spend some time with her family. I was to stay on the boat and bring it north to the Chazy River where I would dock it for a few days and then spend time with her family. It was getting late so I just cleaned up a bit, planned my next few days and called it a night.