Annie M Sailing Stuff

The Canada Day Long Weekend

July 1,2 and 3 2006.

We sailed all three days with varying winds. The weather was hot and clear until Monday afternoon.

On Saturday it was a super pleasant 5-8 knots all day it seemed. We had to actually swim while there was wind.

On Sunday the wind died later in the evening so we were cruising around with the motor and found a bunch of nice beaches. We beached on one of them for an hour or two. Very nice. I think we are going to like it here. ~:0)

There were all kinds of birds. Swallows hunting down bugs. We saw a family of loons. It is rare enough to see one adult Loon, but a Mom and bunch of fluff balls was a great sight to see. We saw a coup,e of exotic ducks I have never seen before. I will have to get a book specifically for these aquatic birds as I have no clue what I am looking at.

I had not seen one thing that we used to see a lot of on Christina Lake. These very tiny little spiders. I call them sailing spiders. On great long gossamer threads of web. They waft their way down the lake on a breeze and you can only see them if the light is at just the right angle. I did see some yesterday here on OK lake for the first time. There always seem to be a fair number of Kingfishers about as well.

Today (Monday) I sailed for a couple of hours by myself. It was a statutory holiday. So basically, I was paid to go sailing today. Can you beat that?

I had a pleasant visit with some very nice folks in a MacGregor Classic 26. Same boat as Clearances 'Nightcrawler". The skipper (Rick) had called out that he would take some pix of US sailing and send them to me. He knew how hard it was to get images of your own boat under way. I took the opportunity (while they were swimming anyway, not sailing) to sail uphill a bit and change into my new Gollywobbler. Then sail on by him so he could take some shots of that. Something I would like to see and I could share with other Weekender sailors. BTW: I found out when researching the techniques required for spinnakers that Gollywobbler is a term the working sail fishermen used for the original versions of what is now known as a spinnaker. I just like that Gollywobbler name too much not to use it all the time. ~:0) Hopefully I will have some of these shots to post here soon.

Here are a few images from the last few days.