Deeply nestled in the inlet, all was calm. Too calm in fact.
My map told the story of two lakes joined by a narrows. A long sinuous shallow affair connecting two mostly independent bodies of water; easily traversed by a canoe, an impenetrable wall for a regular motorboat, not quite impossible for a shallow fisherman’s skiff, and… what of me? Impassible? Impossible? Improbable?
Fuck it, I sailed right into the narrows.
The wind died to nothing. I slowed to a walk, then a saunter, then a bar crawl. No worries, I enjoyed soaking up the sun. I peeked over the edge looking for fish. I had a snack, drank some water. I kept fiddling with the sail and gaining ground a foot or two at a time.
Then losing a foot or two at a time. Damn.
A heron landed not 20’ off my bow. I thought about my fishing poles. They were still packed away. I was tangled in sailing lines and the boat was drifting more or less randomly. Nah, better not risk it. The heron nailed a minnow and gulped it down. It eyed me as if to mock my undeployed fishing rod.
I tried for an hour or more. Sailing wasn’t doing it. Finally I hoisted the sail (double reefed) over my head, and tried to row. Rowing with all the sailing shit (“rigging”) in the way is a fuckin’ mess. Lifting it over my head is better but only if the wind is absolutely not a single molecule of air. Meanwhile the rudder keeps flapping around and screwing up everything. To row I need it to point straight. I’ll eventually figure out a better approach.
Finally, I stepped out into the shallow water. It was maybe 6” deep. I paid out some line and kicked the boat back. Then I led it like a cow on a leash around some shallow spots. There was no current. Wind had no effect. It was dead calm. Walking the boat (“the walk of shame”) is a muddy annoying clumsy way to go… but it’s not stupid, because it works.
Splashing thought the mud and rocks I covered about 100 yards in less time than I’d spent trying to sail and half assed row to cover 40 yards. I’m probably a punchline in a heron’s story.
The new lake was long and narrow and looked both deeper and colder. The wind was whipping down the length of the lake. I don’t know how I got the vibe “cold” but I did. It was still early spring I guess. The lake just had “hypothermia” written all over it for unknowable reasons.
There were a few campsites on the opposite shore; accessible by water or possibly by a dotted line I interpreted as a hiking trail. They were maybe a couple mile’s hike from a dirt road. I have considered building a second cart for my boat. It’s pretty light, just unwieldy. My first cart never made it to the lakes. It was killed right on my lawn. So sad. That’s a story for a different time. Maybe I’d check out the “cart-ability” of the dotted line?
So I pushed off shore with the sail double reefed and lowered to its proper height. I had plenty of trepidation. Indeed, the lake was like a wind tunnel. This wasn’t particularly fun but the boat could handle it and I knew what to do. It felt like I’d dipped that mast directly into the goddamn jet stream but the forces were at least predictable in direction and force. I went straight for the middle of the scattered campsites and progressed fast. One was occupied so I veered away. One wasn’t in accordance with the wind. One had a little sheltered cove and after an hour of beating through wind and waves it looked like a marina to me. I scooted in to land like a boss.
I retracted the rudder & daggerboard, dropped the sail, tied it down stoutly, and went to the campsite. (About 50’ distant and well above lake level.)
I’d been afloat for many hours. I was tired. Surprisingly, the campsite had a nice big picnic table. I’d brought food and water but first I stretched out on top of the picnic table and promptly fell asleep. It had been both good fun and hard work getting there.
So how bad of a sunburn did any exposed skin get whilst you were sleeping on that picnic table?
It was still pretty cold out, and the area was shaded by some pines. The only thing that got on exposed skin was ticks.
A PD Racer is a fun little boat. I forget the boat term but a boom rest can be nice to hold both the boom out of your way and the tiller centered for rowing. On my sharpie skiff I hinged it so I could stow it on the transom when not needed. A lift and drop into the mounting holes.
Also the boom rest allows a nice camping shelter with the halyard lifting the other end up.
Also with dagger board and rudder down its easier to skull than the walk of shame.
I plan a boom rest but haven’t built one yet. It would have to be folding because the PD Racer is so small.
Skulling hasn’t worked well on my boat. It just sorta spins left and right without moving forward in any organized manner. Instead, what I’ve done is add some detachable lines so I can last the rudder straight. Then I can row with oars without messing with the rudder flopping back and forth. I haven’t had the opportunity to test it though.
That’s why you keep the dagger board and rudder down to act as resistance to the sculling oars efforts. Your lines help but I like the notches in the boom rest to keep the rudder straight.
My sharpie skiff is as flat bottomed and shallow draft as your PD Racer.
I can scull faster facing forward than I can row and chicks dig it 🙂
Sculling is awesome. However, you need a pivot point at the transom to be the fulcrum for your sculling lever? The transom on the tiny PD Racer is very completely occupied by the rudder. (The rudder is removable, but it’s not something I want to do while at sea.) Regular oars are good enough… once I get the collapsed sail off my head.
Perhaps you should consider a trolling motor to assist.
A trolling motor would seem to be the ideal solution. In fact that was my original plan. However, I tested it and wasn’t happy with the results.
That’s the fun thing about life, stuff that seems obvious in your head goes to hell in actual practice. I learned that anything you add to or subtract from a boat has pros and cons. I suppose that’s true of all things. The cons of a trolling motor were bigger than I expected.
As an experiment I put a trolling motor on the boat and tried it out; without a sail installed. The little boat responds OK and much better if I put the daggerboard down. It’s not a speed demon but it works.
The problem is the motor adds a lot of complexity on a transom that is already completely busy with the rudder. It and the sail don’t get along well. Mostly because the transom is small! I can’t really have sailing rudder and trolling motor simultaneously unless I figure out some very clever fabrication. If I remove the rudder entirely and leave the sail/mast back with the truck I can troll around with my little boat. But once there’s a sail in play I need that big rudder and I need it all the time.
Also, the battery freaked me out. Remember this is a tiny boat. I had a very heavy battery at the center of the boat near my feet. Then I had a stout electric cable cable that wrapped past my feet, along my body, and near my shoulder (when sitting on the bottom of the boat). If the boat should go over, I’d have an unbreakable cable winding around me and hooked to a dense thing that would sink like a bowling ball. Seemed like an astoundingly efficient way to drown in ten seconds. The battery was strapped in but it just wigged me out. If I try it again I’m going to have to build some sort of battery box and rigid mounted wire situation (possibly with break away?) so I know I won’t get dragged down.
Thanks for the idea though. If I ever figure it out so it’s workable, I’ll post all about it.
1.
a. Loose footed spritsail
b. Loose footed lugsail
c. Chinese lugsail
d. Roller-reef from Matt Leyden’s Paradox boats
2.
a. Sculling oar
b. Chinese sculling oar (yuloh)
c. Mediterranean forward facing rowing style
3.
a. Rudder pedals/triplines and bungy cord for foot rudder control
4.
a. Handline fishing….line wrapped on coke bottle for compact rodlessness in a bathtub fight against giant wooden spider.
Research.
Experiment.
Report.
5. MOAR BOAT!!!
#3 is spot on: I’ve thought a lot about rudder pedals. I haven’t done it yet but that’s in my plans. (Who knows if it’ll happen) My boat’s design is so you can sit on the edge and put your weight waaaaay out there. I do the exact opposite, I sit on the floor, which is much more comfortable and has a very low center of gravity. I think I’d need to build an alternate rudder handle that could extend like usual OR fold away so it doesn’t bang me in the head while I steer with pedals. Right now the handle would extend too far. It’s a shame because I’m very pleased with my crude bent wood / laminated handle. (It’s nothing special to most folk’s skillset but I learned a lot building it.)
#4: I bought a tiny “micro” fishing pole later in the summer. It’s about a foot long. It was for my dirt bike adventures. I haven’t tried it while sailing but that seems like an obvious solution sometime when the wind is very calm and I’m just drifting around. Incidentally, I tried to catch “lunch” while on various dirt bike adventures and the little fishing pole didn’t pan out. I’d rode to some tame little ponds and cast out from shallow areas where I’d parked my motorcycle very close to the lake. You can’t cast far with a tiny pole. (Insert joke here.) I caught a million 2″ sunfish but nothing bigger. I rarely had that trouble when I was fishing with regular poles because back then I was fishing from canoe where the fish are bigger and the little guys won’t go. I also was pretty far north in the Canadian outback. In those waters I didn’t see a lot of sunfish. That might have made a difference. In fact some of the north areas seemed to have good sized fish and NO fish but not much in the “minno-ish” size. Ah well, that’s why nature is so interesting.
Don’t think of it as a “walk of shame”; think of it as “pedestrian kedging.” While commanding USS Constitution during the early days of the War of 1812, even Captain Isaac Hull had to resort to kedging when becalmed in the presence of the enemy.
Perfect! I shall henceforth use the phrase “pedestrian kedging”.