The Slow Fade

  

"Summer has come and passed....."
                            -Green Day


    But, autumn has been pretty damn awesome.

   Actually, the whole season , from beginning to end, has been great, meteorologically and oceanographically speaking.

   After two reallydamncold winters with 95%+ ice cover on the Lakes, the water level has been high all season.

  At least 2 feet higher than 2012/2013.

   Usually,  the water level is highest in the late spring early summer, as snow melt and spring rains swell tributaries and upper Lakes- this year, weirdly, the water level in July was higher than June:

                                                                          -charts courtesy of  Fisheries and Oceans Canada


  ...  And pretty much stayed there through the middle of September, before gradually starting to fall.
 
 As an added bonus, the summer was relatively dry- enough rain to keep farmers happy, enough sun to keep beachgoers happy, and enough wind to keep sailors happy...mostly.


The  sunsets were absofreakinlutely spectacular.

   As the season slowly faded, I discovered that the sunrises were pretty damn amazing too, even if the fact that I was observing them meant that endofseason was looming:

     In September I FINALLY accomplished a task that had been out of my reach for two seasons.

     (No, it wasn't "writing another blog post", Smartass Reader.)

    When Good Old Boat  slated my account of our acquisition of  Karma, Tim, the Managing Editor, requested some high resolution photos of  Karma under sail.  clicking through the hundreds of pics on my computer, I realized I had NO high res photos of us under full sail.  There were lots of pics of us loafing along with the genny fully bagged out, there were low-res pics of us with both main and genoa looking full, fat and sassy...

     But no magazine-worthy, high-resolution, mainsail-and-foresail-as-Neptune-intended pics of Karma in full double-stitched Dacron splendour.

    So, the only pics in my international magazine debut article... are of Karma sailing half-assed.
   

     Sigh.


    Yeah, shut up-  even I can see the symbolism.

    Anyfail, September saw Jack and Hilary step up and catch some full sail sunset shots.  Thanks, guys!

 

   Speaking of full sails and Hilary, he started flying his assymetrical spinnaker this year, making him easy to spot on the lake:

  "What of Whiskeyjack?"  the faithful hordes ask.  "Have you forsaken the ass which formerly bore you?"

   Nay, my friends, and I report  that Whiskeyjack  is in good hands. 

   

   Phil has been sailing her ass off, on her ear, grinning ear to ear:

  She's still in the water, still on the dock, and due for haul out the same day as Karma, November 5th.

  Frank and Lorraine and Keara are also wringing the last few sailing days out of the season as well:

   By the last half of October the Dock was looking sparse:

     Sunday, SWMBO's boat Ereni came out of the water;

      By Tuesday, there were three-  Karma, Keara, and Whiskeyjack.  

     

     Sigh.

     Hurricane Patricia's walk of shame across North America forced us to move to the relative safety of virtually empty Dock Five to ride out the 50 knot gusts and 2 metre waves.  That's us, below, on the dock closest to shore.    The sunsets suck, but it sure is calm in there.

   The water level is up about 2 feet in 12 hours.

    We seldom see waves rolling deep enough, and strong enough, to make the dinghy dock hump.

      No shame here about leaving the dock- there were four freighters hunkered as deep in the Bay as their draft would allow.

  Tomorrow the three boats  leave the Marina for the season and start a new tradition- we move to the dinghy dock for the night, roll out the jack-o-lanterns and candy for intrepid trick or treaters, and enjoy one last night on the water.  Then it's under the bridge to the yard to wait for haulout.

   Then, six long months on the dirt begin.

  Sigh.

Thanks for checking in, and please remember to "Talk the dock!"

Offerings from Off-site, Vol. 1

     " 'Til there was nothing left to burn and nothing left to prove "
                                                                             -Bob Seger

    

       A few months back, I was asked to contribute a regular column to Ontario Sailor Magazine .  As regional sailing magazines go, in my unabashedly biased opinion, I think it is a pretty good one, covering all aspects of the local sailing scene. You can pick up a current issue at any local reputable book store in Ontario, some marinas, a few chandleries, or you can subscribe at the link above.  I recommend you do so.  Then maybe I could get a raise.
 
       I'll occasionally re-publish a back-issue column here from time to time.  This is one of those times.


      An Ode to Orphans

The good news:  Sailboat manufacturers are still building new sailboats, and they are, generally, faster and better handling and more comfortable and better equipped than ever before.

The bad news:  There are a lot fewer of them than a generation ago.

My wife likes to point out that I was born at least 20 years too late.  I think “Gimme Shelter” may be the best song ever written or performed, I appreciate the occasionally troubled soul of triple Weber carburetors lying in wait under a Ferrari Daytona’s hood, and  I feel that mankind’s greatest technological achievement was traveling to the moon.

And back.

Repeatedly.

So, it stands to reason that I have a soft spot for boats from the “Golden Age” of boatbuilding in the 60s and 70s.

    As wonderful as new boats are, as shapely and sleek and polished and equipped and better than back in the day boats, they have become….safe.

    Today we have so much more design knowledge, so much more computing power, and so much more real-world experience than four decades ago, that fewer chances are taken because there are fewer chances to take.

 If you know what works, you do it.
 And you don’t do anything else.

Flash back a few decades:  There may not be bliss in ignorance, but there sure is enthusiasm. See, if you don’t know everything, if you don’t really know what won’t work or what won’t sell, you’re free to try damn near anything.

  There were lots of boatbuilding hits, and a lot more misses, and a lot of enthusiasm as entrepreneurs discovered that it was possible.   If you had a space big enough to hold a mould and enough cash to buy enough wood, resin, cloth, hardware and sails to build a boat that you could display at a boat show, then you could become a boatbuilder!  No courses to take, no mandatory building codes to worry about, if it floated and moved under it’s own power and you could sell it, you were in business.

   Looking back from our well-regulated and thoroughly thought out 21st century, it’s pretty amazing.

   Some great designs came out of that era, boats that are still built today, in one iteration or another, like the Laser and the Hobie Cat and the Catalina 30.

    Others, the vast majority, were far less successful.

    In some cases, marques died an untimely death due to bad management, cashflow issues, or the vagaries of the economy.  In other cases, the boats just weren’t very good- poorly designed or poorly built or poor performers.  In many cases, it was simply a matter of a boat that was just too … weird.

    And I love them all.  From North Sea -inspired Nordica and Halman double enders built in the farmland of southern Ontario to comfortable and clumsy Grampians to the Tardis-like accommodations of the fish-tug shaped Tanzer 28,  these boats represented a freedom of design that has been paved over by the superhighway of  knowledge.  Hell, no one in their right mind would ever even consider building a Willard Vega or Fales Navigator again:  a center cockpit, pilothouse, sloop-rigged sail trawler?  That idea, on paper is insane.
    Yet dozens were sold.

                                                                                                       -image courtesy of yachtworld.com

   The Golden Age saw some weird stuff, but also some better than fine boats that…
  Just.  Won’t.  Die.
 Look at the racing fleets throughout North America- for every close pointing late model J Boat on a course,  there’s a dozen elderly C&Cs and Mirages nipping at her transom, waiting for the skipper to slip, still competitive (enough) three decades on.

   And maybe that is one of the other reasons why there are far, far fewer manufacturers building far, far fewer boats today:  They Just.  Won’t.  Die.

     How many 30 year old cars do you see on the road today?   Maybe boatbuilders could have, or should have, learned something from automakers back in the day- you don’t have to build it to last forever.
You just have to build it to last long enough.

     I’m glad they didn’t.

     I enjoy walking down the Dock and passing Sirens and Sirius 21s and Tanzer 22s and  DS20s and Bluenoses and C&C 24s, seeing the optimism in the designs, the belief that if we could put a man on the moon, then, dadgummit! we can certainly build and sell a full keel, bowspritted and trailboarded, full headroom, 25 foot cruiser.

     Alas, the newest Bayfield 25 is now more than a quarter century old.  Bayfield  Boats closed up in 1988.  Tanzer boats died a year earlier.  So Did Vandestadt and McGruer, Sirius builders. Nordica packed it in even earlier, while Halman managed to hang on until the mid 90s.  Whitby, Ouyang, Mirage, Grampian, Aloha, Ontario, Hughes, CS, Paceship, McVay?  Gone, gone, gone, gone, nada, done, closed, history, no more, goodbye.

     We don’t go to the moon anymore, either.

      I’m not sure we’re better off.     BDJ.






     Let me know what you think.



   Thanks for checking in, and don't forget to "Talk the Dock!"