As everyone may already know, I get restless easily. We have been in Colorado for about 2.5 years now, and Whit and I have finally decided it is time to do some serious travelling. We have been talking about it for over a year, and first decided that we wanted to travel the world in a sail boat. We had never sailed before, so it was to be a daunting undertaking unbeknownst to us at the time.
We bought a 25' Macgregor and many books on sailing in the fall of 2011 so we could begin by learning how to sail. We could have taken a full sailing class and been taught by professionals, but who wants to go the easy route? We rigged the boat in the yard a few times and read the books over the winter until we felt that there was nothing else we could do without being on the water.
In March of 2012, we loaded up the boat and headed to lake Mcconaughy in southern Nebraska for a 3 day weekend. This lake is out on the plains, is over 20 miles long, and is known for high winds and unpredictable weather. Needless to say, it was probably not the best lake to learn how to sail on. We were trailering the boat with our Dodge Avenger Sedan, so it looked a bit funny since the boat is almost twice the size of the car. On the way there, one of our trailer bearing covers fell off somewhere on the highway. There happened to be a Carquest and they put a new one on in about 2 minutes. That was our only mishap in all of the time trailering this boat.
Upon arrival at the lake, we went to a ramp that was almost flat and was made to launch very small craft like jon boats. We could not get the boat off the trailer and ended up filling the rear floorboards and part of the trunk of the car with water because we backed it so far into the water. A couple on the beach and some kids tried to help us get the boat off the trailer with no success. We were all soaked by then and the water was a balmy 38 degrees F. The couple then told us that there was another ramp on the other side of the lake where people put bigger boats in. After bailing out the car as best as we could, we headed to the other side of the lake. We had already raised the mast, so we didn't want to completely stow it for travel so we just lowered it so it was hanging ~15 feet off the back of the boat. It was pretty unstable back there so I drove slow and Whit stayed back there to hold it in place. We made it to the other ramp with no issues, but Whit was yelling for me to slow down the whole time and I was unable to hear her so she was pretty pissed by the time we got there. We raised the mast again and the boat came off the trailer with no problems this time.
We stayed the entire rest of the 3 day weekend on the boat. Thankfully, there was hardly any wind the whole time. But isn't wind required to sail? Yes, but we were ill prepared for any of this, so it was a blessing in disguise. The first night we anchored right near the boat ramp since it had taken so long to get in the water that day. We were the only ones there so we assumed it would be a quiet night. About an hour after dark, fishermen started showing up and unloading their boats by the dozen. All night long. We were just far enough away from the boat ramp for them to be able to get up to full speed next to us, so we rocked all night from their wakes. Their wakes also pushed us into some trees that were just off shore in the middle of the night so I had to move the boat further out and re-set the anchor. The next day was very calm and we did some sailing but only for a few minutes at a time when there was an occasional light breeze. That night, we anchored on the shallow sandy other side of the lake.
The breeze picked up a bit in the middle of the night and we dragged anchor, but no harm was done. The last day we tried to sail some more, but it was once again almost dead calm so we decided to pack it in. We made it home with no issues. I decided that since we dragged anchor at night with small waves and very light wind, we needed to upgrade our anchor system. I got 2 large anchors with 5 foot lengths of thick chain and 60 foot lenghts of rope for each. We decided to take another 3 day weekend a couple of months later. Now the water was in the 60's, so much more tolerable. We got in so late on the first night that we decided to just stay in the boat on land and launch it in the morning. We launched the next day with no problems and the winds were good so we sailed all day up and down the lake.
We were about to start looking for a place to anchor for the night when the wind started steadily kicking up. It was already at 10-15 knots, so we were not looking for anything stronger since we were still novices. It got so strong that the boat was heeling over at about 15 degrees. This made us a bit uncomfortable so we dropped the jib and slowed down some. The wind continued to rise until we were again heeling over pretty far with just the main up. We decided to drop the main and motor to the windward side of the lake. The shore rose up sharply 30 feet or so which we figured would give us some protection from the wind. We got to that side and anchored about 100 yards offshore. The wind was now gale force and all the boats on the lake were high-tailing it back to their trailers, except us. We had not anchored close enough to shore for it to give us any protection from the wind, so we had to pull up the anchors and get closer to shore. The wind was so strong at this point that I had to use the motor at full throttle and Whit had to pull with everything she had just to get the anchors out of the water. Whit partially stepped on the solar panel while doing this and took a pretty good chunk out of her foot. With her bleeding all over the deck and no time to clean it up until after we re-set the anchors, we headed further in towards the shore. I motored us to about 50 feet from shore and about 2 foot depth. We dropped the anchors and I spread them out so they would make a nice big V once the lines were taught. We drifted out about 40 feet until all the slack was gone in the anchor lines which put us at about 3 foot depth and just under 100 feet from shore. This offered some protection and we felt much better. It was still very wavy and I was nervous about being so close to shore, so neither of us slept that night and Nala was very angry.
The wind shifted direction at about 4 AM and started to push us towards shore. I had to get in the water and bring the anchors further out one at a time. Sixty degree water doesn't sound bad, but it was pretty brutal at 4 AM with the wind howling. We were miserable and tired by that time, so as soon as the sun started to come up, we took in the anchors, turned tail, and got the hell outta there. We cut that weekend short but had gotten in a lot of sailing and on the water experience for such a short time. We took the boat out a couple more times that summer for short day trips, but we just felt like we were not going to like living on a boat full time. Not yet at least. This put us back to square one. We knew we wanted to go on a semi-permanent travelling adventure, but we didn't know how or where.
