A very wet cruise in the CLC - Richard Spelling.
Weather
forecast for my four day Eufaula cruise: Chance of rain: Thursday 100%, Friday
100%, Saturday 100%, Sunday 40%
Started the day Thursday morning with a
three hour dash down the Muskogee Turnpike to Lake Eufaula, OK. The various
websites make the claim "over 600 miles of shoreline and 102,000 surface acres".
Don't know about that, but it's so blasted big you have to buy two maps. The
maps show distance from the dam (where we were planing on launching), with the
largest numbers being in the 30's. Looked like a good chance to try some GPS
navigation and, if we got any wind, to determine the rough water ability of
Schroedinger's Cat. Maybe prep for a Gulf tour...?
Arrived a little after
11 am and there is no sign of any homemade boats or builders! I check my watch
to make sure I have the date right. You wouldn't think someone could make that
mistake but I've been known, on rare occasions, to show up for work and wonder
where everyone was at around 10 am on Saturday morning. Or, once, to show up for
work at 8pm instead of 8am and wonder why it was getting dark...
Drive around the park for a bit. Site
recon. There are two ramps, one secluded with what looks like waters that are
protected from the wind, the other exposed on a lee shore. The exposed ramp was
next to a camping area with a half dozen people there and was visible from the
rest of the lake so I got the boat ready to launch there. Had my truck broken
into on a secluded launch ramp once and I'm in no hurry to repeat the
experience.
After an hour of poking around, setting the boat up, and launching
it (usually takes only 15 minutes but I'm waiting on Tom & George) I
decided they weren't going to make it and set off motoring toward what looked
like an interesting island north of the launch site.
Of course when I get
halfway across the lake I see a big white Micro pull up at the launch ramp. Had
to use the binoculars to confirm. Don't know why they call them bi-noculars -
never could look through them but one eye at a time.
Headed back and tied
up at the dock. Itself an interesting experience as I had never tied up at a
dock before.
Cell phone to the rescue: George was coming, but the
exchange student they had with them was sick and George, Mary, and Olaf would be
late. Was decided we would motor to the island north of the launch point and
George would meet us there.
We were setting up Tom's Micro at the
turn-around on the ramp and were promptly bitched at by a park ranger for
"parking" after we had been there for 15 minutes.
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(as always, click on picture for larger view)
We motor up and around Mud Creek, using the map and the GPS to confirm my
initial guess of where the inlet to the river was. Couldn't see it till we're
within a quarter mile, so this was a good test of my navigation skills.
Visibility was fine, it just looked the same as the rest of the lake! Was thinking we would motor around the island and scope out a nice protected bay to anchor for the night while we waited on George to show up.
Stopped for lunch before we got to the channel that makes the island an
island and not a peninsula. Lunch was MREs - what I keep calling my "boat
meals". MREs, the military edition ones, with the chemical heaters and the
whole nine yards. Heated mine up on the stove and gave Tom the MRE heater to
play with.
Alana wanted to play with Tom's dingy, and I broke out the
emergency paddle from S' Cat. It's about 2 1/2 feet long, not really much of a
paddle for a 20 ft boat, but perfect for a 7 year old to play with. I call it my
emergency paddle tounge-in-cheek because if my motor quits and I can't sail my
emergency propulsion system is really carried around in my pocket and is made by
Nokia.
It developed that Alana can't paddle a dingy. We didn't find this
out till she was about 15 ft from shore, and too scared to follow instructions.
The funny thing being that there was a north wind that would have blown her back
to the shore if she had just stopped trying to paddle! All her attempts
so get back were keeping her away. She threw Tom the rope before I got the
Chebacco started up and away from the shore on shallow water
drive.
Shallow water drive is a setting on the Nissan 6 hp where the
motor is kicked up about halfway. Worked so-so in reverse but threw water
in the air for 20 ft in forward! Cool!
Didn't really need the shallow
water drive at this point but the predicament gave me an excuse to play with
it.
We find the channel back to the lake. Or it would have been a channel if the
water was up about 10 feet more... <sigh> I ask Tom if he has a shovel so
we can dig a canal 100 ft from the river to the lake... He doesn't think it's
that funny. We decide to spend the night there.
It's getting on time for
George to show up so I head out at 1/2 throttle and 6 knots back the way we came
to go find George. Start heading back towards the launch point and see what
looks like a green and red Micro with the bi-(mono)noculars. Decided there
is no reason for me to go all the way over there, hoist the main so he can be
sure to see me, and motor over to the lake side of the "channel".
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Tom's boat on one side of the cut, mine on the other. |
Run aground 50 ft from shore in knee deep water. If the water was at the
normal level (4 ft higher) this would be a really cool beach to swim and sail
on.
Suggested if we want to get anywhere in the morning we should camp
somewhere on the south side of the island so we don't have the trip down Mud
Creek from the "channel" to do first thing in the morning. Tom suggests we camp
on the east side of the island so we both motor east and pick a nice spot
sheltered from the wind.
First thing I do when we get there is go pee on
"No Camping" sign...
I snuggle S' Cat up into a narrow and deep part of
the bay, and tie off with a couple of limb lines. Perfect - I can step from the
cockpit to the land!
George shows up in a bit, and we talk and visit for
awhile. George, Mary, and Olaf go back to the rec. area to spend the night in
the camper. Mary doesn't want to spend the night in the rain on the
boat.
Water is calm all night; we are sheltered from the south wind that
blows up in the morning and I sleep amazingly well.
In the morning I burn
eggs for breakfast. Apparently the butane stove I have puts out too much heat
even on the lowest setting for the thin backpack camping mess kit from
Walmart.
In our little protected cove there is no wind at all but the
tops of the trees are moving something fierce and the waves in Mud Creek are
moving quite quickly. Looks like lots of wind today. Good - will get a
chance to check the sea keeping of CLC in bigger waves.
George arrives
and we set off for the island by "Snug Harbor" that we picked out the night
before as a destination for the day.
I'm towing Tom's dingy. As you can see in the picture we are getting some
pretty big waves now. I tend to overestimate the size of the waves so I kind of
kept an eye on the dingy. It never disappeared behind waves but got close
a couple of times.
Some pounding as the front of CLC drops off of some of
the waves and I'm throwing spray 20 ft to the sides occasionally. Some
water coming over the top but not too much. Occasionally water will wash up the
back of the motor well but it doesn't get into the cockpit.
Do not like
towing a dingy. I was making very little progress in these waves, plenty
of wind, by only doing about 2.5 knots. I should be doing at least a knot or two
more, me thinks, judging from my sailing in similar (if less intense)
conditions. Wind kicks up even more, maybe force 4, and I pull a reef
in.
Quite a lot of action but I'm dry under the dodger and do not at any
time feel concerned about the boat, just annoyed the dingy is slowing me down
when I could be making bigger splashes!
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George heading back to the launch ramp after taking on water. Only picture of the big waves, I was a little busy... |
George has a regular 16 ft Micro. He is plowing into the waves so
much that the step holes in the front are flooding the bow well enough for water
to start coming into the cockpit through the forward cabin vent! He drops
sail and motors back to the launch point.
I decide I want to beat upwind
to get out of big waves and pick up some speed. Good thing I do as Tom
stays pretty much on the north side of the lake and rams four stumps on the trip
to the island. He radios when he hits the first one and I swear up and down the
map shows him in 45 ft of water.
Hmm... Big stump fields everywhere.
Maybe that is what all these little red ">" signs mean? Not on the
legend though.
I leave the reef in even after the wind calms down and let
the boat self steer as we continue to beat pretty much into the wind towards the
island we picked out.
Island a bust. First off, it's not an island and
has no protected bays. We land on one small projection to keep the boats out of
the waves and walk all the way around the "island". The mud is sticky and gets
over everything. There is trash, shotgun shells, ATV tracks, etc. all around and
we decide this isn't the place to spend the night.
Tom is taking on water from his stump ramming sessions so we head back toward
dam.
I spend a frustrating five minutes trying to leave! I can't
get off the blasted shore! I pull in the dingy painter so it won't foul
the prop and back off the sticky mud with the motor in reverse. Cut the
engine and the wind blows me back to the mud! And I'm on the downwind side
of the peninsula! The boat is sailing UPWIND into the
mud! I do this three times before I decide to back out 100 ft to open water
under power. Frustrating.
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Tom's leak appears to have slowed down so we anchor in a rocky cove sheltered
from the south wind. I'm scared of the rocks so I put out two anchors and two
limb lines and we take down mizzens for a possible thunderstorm the NOAA man
(machine?) was talking about on VHF.
A dingy is useful for something!
(other than something for Alana to play with. And slowing the boat
down) We use it to set anchor lines.
Tom cooks up a couple of
pounds of shrimp for dinner and we eat it in the Micro in one of the brief
periods of no rain.
Quiet night - slept like a log till the wind shifts
to the north and we start getting some small wavelet action to wake me up.
NOAA radio says thunderstorms on a line from Macalester to Muskogee. South
of us and a north wind. Maybe we'll be lucky. I go back to
sleep.
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In the morning we have turkey ham for breakfast. Yum. Incidentally, my
built-in icebox kept ice in the water bottles for almost a week.
Sweet.
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No wind so we motor back to dam site to see if George hung around or took
off. He's not there and the showers are locked. Guess I'll just have to
keep making do with my "Leinweber" shower...
We look at the map and
decide to spend the night a couple of miles from the dam in a place called
Broken Cove. We start off motoring but the wind soon picks up and we hoist
the dacron. I reject my first pick, the small island, as there is no
shelter and it's in plain view of a bunch of houses. All the second
choices on the west side of Broken Cove are rejected because I can see trees
sticking out from half a mile away. We head for the east side and find a nice
cove with water deep enough to get the boat noses onto the beach and raft up for
dinner.
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Bazillian birds in the area but they get annoyed with the sailboats and
leave.
Lunch is Raman with dehydrated chicken. I boil the chicken
and let it soak for 30 minutes but it's still too hard to eat. Guess if it
takes 18 hours to dehydrate it will take more than 30 minutes to
rehydrate. Will try putting it in a bag with water in the icebox the night
before next time.
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I lay down to read for a bit and Tom and Alana take the dingy out for a
row. I decide to get up and take some pictures and what do I see but Alana
ROWING the dingy back! This is the girl who couldn't paddle two days
before!
For dinner we have pasta and burritos thanks to the miracle of
MREs.
After dinner we go out so Tom can sail a Chebacco. He is very
impressed.
| You go to the trouble of making beds, and where do the kids sleep? |  |
Rains all night. Humidity is horrible inside the boat.
Condensation on everything; especially the lexan windows. So much so that I
don't even need the curtains for privacy! Sure clears your lungs out but
would get pretty old after a week or so.
Breakfast of eggs. Not
burned this time - borrowed Tom's iron skillet.
Sail away without using
the motor in the morning on light winds, just for giggles. I poke around the
bay, heeling the boat on one tack then the other so the bilge pumps can clean
out under the floorboards.
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Because we weren't using the motors, got these pictures! (la la la..., what
is that behind me? DIVE! DIVE!)
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Shot of the fall colors in the hills. |