sailing log: 2022-08-02

Tuesday afternoon’s are never ending?

we vacationed for another family vacation week up at Camp Arcadia and the weather cooperated nicely on Tuesday afternoon – with smaller rolling waves and decent winds to take advantage of out on the waters of Lake Michigan.

after sailing solo for a bit, I swung back towards shore and picked up our youngest son Iggy, but my pics of him were taken through a dry bag for my iPhone and ended up super blurry.

it also was a big day for our 14-yr old son – he took sailing lessons in Opti’s ( more than a couple years ago), but time/circumstance/weather hadn’t ever given him a chance yet to solo sail our Minifish or Sunfish. but this afternoon, he got some last-minute tips from T2 (our oldest), and just jumped right in the Minifish and started sailing.

I tried to stay at least in his general area (me sailing on the Sunfish), but I shouldn’t have worried about it – he did great, didn’t tip over or sail into anything, and got some great solo sailing experience. after a while, I let T2 sail the Sunfish – here he is on the Sunfish w/ Luke on the Minifish.

I’m really pleased with using my Garmin watch to track the sailing activities – just a couple clicks on the watch and it’s ready to track the sailing, and after I upload the activity to Garmin Connect, then I can change the “activity” to “sailing” and it changes to nautical miles and knots.

and here’s a blow-up view of the tracking route

it was a great afternoon on the beautiful waters of Lake Michigan!

is it spring?

warm (45°F) and sunny February day in Michigan has me thinking sailing thoughts…. even though we just had ~18” of accumulated snow and a 3-week period when daily high temps didn’t even get above freezing.

I was scrolling through some old photos and found some great Sunfish sailing memories. these are from vacationing at Camp Arcadia on Lake Michigan, probably 2009 or so.

a common theme to the photos: I like taking people (adults and kids) for rides on my Sunfish so they can experience the thrill of it, even on some of the calmer wind days.

sunfish sailing in the rain

it was an interesting afternoon: winds seemed light and shifty at times and the sky out on the horizon looked dark and cloudy. radar showed a big storm coming across Lake Michigan, but it seemed like it might pass up to the north of Camp. my son T2 and I decided to try sailing on our Sunfish and Minifish despite the chance of rain.

as we started rigging our boats the first rain drops started to fall. but I didn’t see anything to dark on the horizon and had not heard any thunder. we figured let’s try it out and see if we could at least get a quick sail.

I sent him off in the Minifish and then raised the sail on my Sunfish. winds were mostly from the south and had picked up some. rain continued to drip down on me, just a nice gentle rain.

as we sailed, the wind and waves both kept increasing as the rainstorm kept coming from the west and across Lake Michigan. I was able to snap a few pics before it got too intense.

T2 sailing behind me, Camp Arcadia on the shoreline of Lake Michigan behind him.

the cool rain was awesome and as the wind and waves kept picking up it just got better. we were both flying across the water, mostly just reaches east and west, as I didn’t want to wander to far north or south up the shoreline with the storm close.

it was an awesome afternoon of sailing!

my 1st sunfish (a newer picture)

Camp Arcadia is a family tradition with us, but my wife and I have made it an “every other year” tradition.  some of my other family members still go up every year.  it’s a charming and beautiful place, nestled in a quiet town in norther Michigan, and just an amazing beautiful setting right on the shores of Lake Michigan.

this year was an off year for us, as we took the trip to Cancun with some college friends (and sailed the Hobie) –  but my sister took her family and my parents went this year as well.

this afternoon, within minutes of each other, my dad and sister both texted me the same photo, with a text like “is this you?” or “wish you were here!”

it’s funny how things work.  I recognize the Sunfish by that particular sail color/pattern – that happens to be the 1st Sunfish that I ever sailed on, now almost 20 years ago.

I’ve posted about this 1st Sunfish before: my 1st ever sail on a Sunfish, another picture here, and my 1st post ever here!

it was the start of it all.

et ego in Arcadia: Sunfish sailing

it was a traditional family vacation at Camp Arcadia, filled with good food, plenty of relaxing & some book reading, and wonderful time spent with family and friends (some old and some new). a lot of time spent down on the beach, playing in the sun and sand, doing some swimming, jumping waves on the wavey days and playing with kayaks and stand-up paddleboards on the calmer days.

there ended up being 2 good sailing days (for me anyway, my oldest son sailed on a 3rd day, but it was pretty light winds and he mainly just drifted around in circles for a while).

day 1: Sunday afternoon

after walking to the local Lutheran church in the little town of Arcadia, we headed back to Camp and ate the buffet lunch.  the weather seemed promising and Sunday afternoon’s schedule at Camp was fairly light, so most of us headed down to the beach, and T2 and I both got the boats ready for sailing (with some help dragging them up and over the small sand dunes and beach grass).  after setting up T2 with the Minifish, he was off and sailing.

I rigged the sail and misc parts on the Sunfish and my 3rd son, Luke, joined me for the 1st sail. he begged to take the mainsheet and tiller as soon as he could!  north bluffs are off in the distance behind him.

after a while of sailing with Luke, I headed back into shore – dropping off Luke and picking up his cousin, Sam.

later on, I gave a ride on the Sunfish to my sister-in-law, but didn’t get any pictures.

afterwards, I got to solo sail on the Sunfish for a while, so I’d chase T2 on the Minifish for a while, or just spend some time tacking and working on getting as much speed going as I could.  the winds were pretty excellent, with wind speeds in the low teens, maybe 12-15 miles per hour, with gusts into the high teens.  not strong enough to tip me over, but good enough to catch a good puff and get the Sunfish up on a plane, every once in a while perfectly timed to catch the crest of a wave and “surf” the Sunfish for a short while.

in my excitement to get down to the water and out sailing, I forgot to bring my GoPro camera, but did have my iPhone in a dry bag – so I was able to snap the pictures above and a few real quick videos, but that’s all.  I did turn on my Runkeeper app on the phone to track my route for one of the times out that afternoon.

the next couple days were dead flat calm water – perfect for playing with other water toys (kayaks, SUP’s, etc.) but not good for Sunfish sailing.  Wednesday is “day out of camp” day – we went on a canoe trip… and that is a whole different story for another day.

day 2: Thursday evening sail

so the wind finally picked up some on Thursday and the waves were perfect for playing in the water, so the usual afternoon crowds at the beach were even larger.  due to the lack of beach area (Lake Michigan is up approximately 4 feet!), I didn’t want to try to launch and return to the beach with that many kids swimming and jumping in the waves. fearing that the week of vacation was coming to an end with no more sailing, I decided to go for an evening sail, when far fewer people would be swimming and lounging at the beach.  as luck would have it, this time I remembered the GoPro, but left my iPhone up in our room.  here’s a screen cap: me on the Sunfish and T2 way off in the distance on the Minifish.

it was a beautiful evening for sailing – the sun was slowly setting amidst the clouds out on the horizon and T2 and I had all of Lake Michigan to ourselves – not another boat in sight.  my sister-in-law snapped this amazing photo of us and the sunset from her vantage point up on the Camp patio.

Friday ended up being a decent day for wind, but straight out of the west pushing big waves up onto the beach.  on an empty beach, launching could be done setting off immediately on a 45-degree angle to the wind, but with again so many kids playing in the big waves that day, we didn’t try to sail.

still 2 great days on the water was better than none, and it was a blast!

Newton’s 3rd law of motion

for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

I admit it, I’m an engineer by day – and should know better about the physics involved here, but I still somehow didn’t see it coming.  my brother-in-law thought it’d be fun to jump off the Sunfish as we were approaching the beach.  seemed like a reasonable and fun idea to me – until the boat rocked backwards and dumped me off into the water as well!