Arctic Solo Sail

There is a plan behind my meandering port to port through the lakes and not looking for shortcuts.  I’ve gone through waterways, lots of waterways and I love them.  They are always interesting to me, but it’s out on the lakes that I learn those things I need to know about the boat.  Remember, until I sailed from Two Harbors in April, I had only been under sail in the CAP’N once for the sea trials before buying her.  That was for just a couple of hours in very light airs.   This is my learning time.  Learning the boat, how to sail alone, how to sail a multihull, learning how to be alone without being lonely.  My learning style is repetition. 

Each day is a banquet table filled with delicious discoveries.  Waking with the morning wind in a  direction that says “go now”, the exhilaration when a five footer slings the CAP’N LEM  into the teens, the wind changes  at noon and sunset, the self congratulations that comes with the end of the day at anchorage. (“Ya didn’t hit anything, ya didn’t break anything and ya didn’t fall in the water. Oh, Tommy, you’re so amazing!”)

And there are the milestones that encourage, too.  There were two this leg.  The first occurred when I crossed Latitude 45° at Longitude 083° 22.738N heading south.  At that moment I was exactly half way between the equator and the North Pole heading the wrong direction or so it may seem.  This serves to remind me, on the oceans of the world the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line, but a Great Circle.

Then, while sailing from Oscoda to Port Austin, at 1423 position Lat 44° 13.455’N ~ Long 083° 03.339’W, THE CAP’N LEM sailed her 1000^th nautical mile since launching in Two Harbors MN on April 6^th 2009.  This reminds me to never live in dread of how far I have to go but joy at how far I have come!  And my dear friend, in life, as in sailing, I have come a very, very long ways. 

At 1528 on May 18, 2009, I anchored the CAP’N LEM in Port Austin MI at Position Lat 44° 03.005’N ~Long 082° 59.565’W, in 4 feet of water.  It is warm, sunny and buggy. (No, not muggy, buggy!  Little buggies flying everywhere, in everything, my hair, my coffee, my sail cover.  Like me they just love the CAP’N LEM.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 9:24 am and is filed under Lake Huron. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.