The Adventures of Twoflower

August 3, 2021 Tonight I volunteered on the North Star Sail Club Race Committee boat.  NSSC ( https://northstarsail.org ) is our new home/Twoflower's new home, and Chuck, Feather and I have been trying to learn the ropes...er...lines, and find our place in the club. The new summer race series started tonight, and I thought I'd go out on the race committee boat and see what this was all about.  It's one of the many service options available to members in this volunteer-led organization. I've seen the races on the lake when Chuck and I have been out on kayaks or out on our boats,  and I've never had any personal desire to race. but I got caught up in the excitement of the Mackinac race this year since we "knew" so many more people racing. And hanging out on a boat for four hours seems a relatively easy way to accumulate service hours. Why not? Several of us newbies were welcomed onto the RC boat by the RC committee tonight; some of them were from racing crew...

 Sail report Sunday, August 1, 2021 Lk St Clair This is what it looks like to spend 6 hours sailing on Lk St Clair in near perfect conditions. After a quick temporary fix to seal up the hole in the deck where the starboard side dorade box used to be, we had a quick lunch on the boat, and then headed out onto the water.  It was so nice to have other sailors in the club smile and wave to us and say hi to Feather as we passed. I'm really enjoying the camaraderie of the NSSC.  There was a little rain and possible thunderstorms rumbling around the area, but Chuck thought we could get a couple of hours of sailing in before they hit. The lake was hazy as we sailed out, but we had a little company anyway. This kind of weather dissuades a lot of power boaters, but the wind is hard for sailors to resist. We started with a single reef point on the main, but quickly decided we needed a second one, and we didn't have it set up, so Chuck went forward to rig. Finally, we were scooting r...

 July 18-19, 2021 Lk St Clair We did our first over-night anchorage since the trip on Sunday night.  We anchored out in Fisher Bay in Lk St Clair, arriving for sunset. When the sun went down, we had the eerie experience of thousands of midges dropping on to the Bimini and all over the boat.  We could actually hear them falling onto the canvas above us.  It was almost as if they were solar-powered and once there power source was gone, they died instantly.   In the morning, the entire boat was coated in dead midges.  It took a few hours with a power washer to get the fiberglass clean.  We 'll have to wait for the wind and rain to clean the sails.

 July 17, 2021 Lk St Clair Today we worked on the sailboat (re-sealing the mast where it goes through the deck and was leaking a bit) but were lucky enough to be offered a break by our well-neighbor Matthew and his sister.  He took us, Feather included, for a quick spin on his power boat around the bay. This was a(mother) new experience for Feather; she didn't know quite what to do, so she walked around and around the boat, up to and down from the foredeck, until finally she got the nerve up to go into the cabin.  I'm not sure we would have been invited, but everyone loves Feather. After we got back from that bit of fun, we finished up our work and did some stupid pet tricks. Then I went and picked up a pizza (we highly recommend the Lk St Clair Pizza from Bitto's Little Italy) and went for a sail.  Feather wasn't very interested in her kibble when there was pizza to be had. When she finally deigned to eat, she couldn't be bothered to stand up to do so.

 ...you can see forever July 21,2021 Just an incredibly clear, absolutely perfect day for a sail.                                             Miles of visibility A few shots of the neighbors...  And a few of the sunset.