First sail of the season, northern Michigan

[Cevin c Taylor]

This year, due to various family events and other things, has seen not much sailing for me.  I finally got the 16' out this past weekend on Hubbard Lake, in NE Michigan, where we were at over Father's Day weekend.  I was planning to go out with just my daughter (13 yo) and wife, but, to my utter amazement, my mother wanted to go.  My mom is very afraid of the water, so we were all shocked that she asked if she could go.  Of course my dad then wanted to go, not to be shown up.  That would make 5 of us on the boat, which we had only tried once before.  The wind looked brisk, but not too rough, so we decided to give it a go.  The four adults were in the cockpit, and my daughter sat up on the bow (we all wore life jackets of course).  I decided to not put up the jib because it would have been hard to control the jib sheets with such a full cockpit, and I wanted to make sure the boat didn't get out of hand.  My goal was a nice peaceful sail.  It all went great.  We sailed with the parents for about an hour or so on a nice beam reach E/W part way across the lake.  The wind was stronger than I had thought once we got away from the shore.  I had made the decision to just take the 32 lb thrust trolling motor.  I was worried about it not being able to move all that weight back to the dock.  We sailed pretty much on a reach up to the channel (about 80 yards long or so) leading to the dock, and then turned right into the wind up the channel.  That near shore the wind was pretty weak, and so the trolling motor did fine to ease us right up to the dock.  It really couldn't have gone much better.  Both mom and dad want to go back out one of these days.  My wife and I then headed back out for another couple of hours.  We put up the jib and were flying along.  The wind had picked up, and out in the middle of the lake was quite strong, with lots of whitecaps.  Hubbard Lake is about 7 mi x 2.5 mi.  I was amazed at how great my wife did.  She has always been nervous on the water, but she is getting used to the boat and overall seemed very comfortable, pouring us some wine and handing me cheese and crackers.  She only got startled a few times when a gust caught us, but even that was brief.  She even stood in the cabin and unsnarled a jib sheet that had somehow gotten fouled.  I thought that she would get tense with all those whitecaps, but she did great.  I showed her how to heave to, and she was quite impressed at how motionless the boat stayed.  It took some tacking to get back to the dock, but at one point I tried "motor sailing" with the trolling motor, and it seemed to help a lot.  To top it all off, we had no harrowing docking experience at the end.  She really had a good time - probably the best time so far sailing.  I'm hoping we've turned a corner.  

[Bob23]

That sounds like the perfect first sail of the year! Everyone should have one of those at least once in thier lives...balances out the terrifying sails! So glad your wife likes to sail. That really adds to the experience. Sounds like it was the perfect Fathers Day gift!
Bob23

[JBC]

Great first-sail of the season recap.  Keep this up and your wife will start wanting to skipper (just as mine does much of the time, these days).  Then you'll just be along for the ride or, if you wish, moveable ballast!

Jett