[Public-List] Not quite a Misery Cruise...

Thu Oct 15 16:40:05 PDT 2020

I thought 1944 was when they moved it from the last Thursday to the 4th
Thursday of November, to give said retail lobby an extra week of
Christmas shopping in the years where November ends on a Thursday or
Friday. I'm a little blurrier on the transition from October to
November, and where that fell relative to the change from the date being
a state-by-state thing to it being the same nationwide. But yeah, it
wasn't always November, and the retail lobby certainly had its fingers
in the setting of the current date back in 1944.

Cheers,
Kris

On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 06:29:00PM -0400, Gordon Laco via Public-List wrote:
> Hello Marcelo… 
> 
> The original American thanksgiving in Massachusetts happened between the middle of September and the middle of October… harvest time.  We don’t know the exact date.  A similar event happened in the same era in Quebec at the settlement there, also about the same dates… harvest time.  
> 
> The US and Canada used various dates over the decades, and both used the same one on the second weekend in October until 1944 when the US date was moved back a month, as I wrote below, to accommodate department story lobbyists who wanted a kick off date more convenient for Christmas shopping sales.   1944 wasn’t really all that long ago, but people forget such things quickly. 
> 
> I’ve just re-read Vito Duma’s story of his great voyage…  I hope he’s still remembered in Argentinia as the great seaman he was.   Do you know if his yacht Gaucho is still preserved?
> 
> Gordon Laco
> www.gordonlaco.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > On Oct 15, 2020, at 6:22 PM, Marcelo D. Gentinetta via Public-List <public-list at lists.alberg30.org> wrote:
> > 
> > What? Thanksgiving in October? Never heard of such a thing. Interesting, but you can’t hold an Argentinean responsible for that lack of knowledge. As always, I enjoy reading your cruising exploits. 
> > Take care,
> > Marcelo
> > #441
> > 
> >> On Oct 15, 2020, at 12:46 PM, Gordon Laco via Public-List <public-list at lists.alberg30.org> wrote:
> >> 
> >> Hello friends, 
> >> 
> >> We aboard SURPRISE had a nice sailing trip this past weekend… I took Friday off, and with that tacked onto the Thanksgiving Weekend with it’s holiday Monday, gave us a nice four day cruise.  Thanksgiving?  Yes… some say the ‘real’ one, which both the USA and Canada observed till 1944 when the States moved theirs to November in response to department store lobbyists who wanted a kick off holiday better situated for Christmas sales…  but that’s another topic…
> >> 
> >> Our friends aboard SeaMarie (the Invader 36 I think I wrote about earlier in the season) couldn’t come up till later Friday, so we decided we’d go Friday morning anyway, then lay in wait for them to come up on Saturday morning.  Our destination was set as Wreck Island via O’Donnell Point, which in the forecast moderate winds should have given us a really nice romping reach up the coast out in the open.  Should have.
> >> 
> >> We motored and sailed out of Midland Harbour and SURPRISE slid into the open anchorage at Methodist Point well before supper time.  With the wind forecast to be easy southerly with a bit of west in it, Methodist was a good choice.  Down went the hook into the clean sand in the crystal clear water… we shipped the BBQ and had a wonderful dinner.  We retired below at sunset after admiring the blazing red Mars low in the southern sky.
> >> 
> >> Well the peace didn’t last long.   Before midnight the wind rose to something like 30 knots, and while we were in calm water due to substantial land to windward, the wind blasting down off the hills in authentic williwaws did a good job making things seem ‘busy’.   The rig was doing that hmmmmmmvvvvvvaaaaaahhhhh hmmmmmvvvvvvaaaaahhhhh as the heavy air found various harmonics, and SURPRISE yawed back and forth plucking at her chain.    We lay awake in the dark in our bunks listening… ‘ah, that’s the topping lift…. hmmm I think that’s the spinnaker halyard…. what’s that?…. oh, a can of soup in the locker over my bunk…” and so on all night.   Not very restful.
> >> 
> >> Dawn finally came… Saturday morning.   We could see the open water north of us was being whipped into a frenzy and the wind was unabated.   I made text contact with Fred aboard SeaMarie, before I had to make my case, he agreed this was not a good day to go north up the coast on the outside, particularly as we’d be making a leeward landfall at O’Donnell with the waves having a 100 mile fetch which would no doubt produce what I call ‘Great Honkers’.   Great Honkers?  Well now, who remembers the comic book called ’Turok, Son of Stone’?   Turok was a Plains Indian who with his buddy Andor fell into a canyon where dinosaurs still lived… they called the dinosaurs ‘Great Honkers’, so that’s what I call unpleasantly large seas.  Usually nobody knows what the heck I’m talking about…
> >> 
> >> So we resolved to meet SeaMarie off Brebeuf Island, where we’d sail in company up the inside to Bone Island with its very secure anchorage… unofficially called ’The Hockey Stick’ because of its shape, also called by some ‘Boner Bay’ for some reasons which are obvious (it’s in Bone Island) and others which I chose not to go into.
> >> 
> >> Brefeuf was dead downwind from Methodist, so after making everything ready for sea, we plucked up the hook and left Methodist under sail.  We had our high clewed working jib set on the furler, and since the course was downwind, I kept the full main.   In no time we were out of the shelter and belting along with a big foaming bow wave and the dinghy planing merrily behind us like a waterskier.    As we got further from the shelter, the wave size grew… not quite ‘honkers’ but big enough to give us exciting surfs which pushed the knot meter up to a high of 8.9 knots coming down the face of one particular wave.  Well maybe that one was a honker…
> >> 
> >> Being careful not to sail by the lee, reckoning an accidental gybe would be disastrous, we found ourselves coming too high of the course and edging closer to Minos Bank than I preferred.  I tentatively hauled a bit on the mainsheet to see what hauling it in a bit would be like, that being a good thing to do to limit the swipe across the boat when we gybed…. I was not particularly surprised to find that with all my strength I could barely haul in a foot of it.  Well no gybing for us, on purpose or otherwise.
> >> 
> >> Well past Giants Tomb Island I waited for a lull in the wave size then up we came turning to port… crash! through the next wave coming astern and that old ‘holy crap the wind feels stronger when you’re facing it’ feeling.  Good SURPRISE carried her way through the eye of the wind, and in no time settled her self down running again, but with the main on the other (port) side now… and we were able to proceed toward our rendezvous.  
> >> 
> >> Way up ahead, reaching down Severn Sound and passing Gin Rocks, came our friends aboard SeaMarie.  They had a full main, and full 150 genoa set and from the ups and downs they were doing as they started feeling the waves which were behind us, for them the fun of heavy air sailing was about over.  How much wind?  Well, gusting 30+, mid 20’s otherwise is my guess.
> >> 
> >> Another indication of their preoccupation was a text I received from Fred a half hour or so later after we’d both transited the channel at Minnicognashene… ‘WE ARE THROUGH MINNICOG’.  I realized they’d never seen us, either approaching nor right aft of them through the channels.   I confined my response to a sarcastic ’No kidding…but that was a while ago.’     He looked around and was clearly startled when he saw us about 100 meters behind him.   Haha, how one cherishes such moments…
> >> 
> >> So up to Bone we went… past that damned Hotchkiss Rock we did more than kiss earlier in the season.  We call it ‘PooPoo Rock’ now, and the bastard is again just above the surface.  It actually had a cormorant standing on it, holding its wings out ‘gargoyling’ to dry them, as I used to refer to it to my sons.    There’s a controversial open season on those birds here this fall… but my trigger finger was twitching to blow the rock to hell, not the bird.   A small cloud of chickadees flew past, two of them alighting on the boat right beside us, one on the mainsheet about a foot from my face.  The poor think looked exhausted, panting with his beak open.  He uttered one loud call (very loud, being so close) then they took off again to join their pals.  I hope they made it to land, which was a mile or so to windward.  Why fight so hard to go to windward when there was land to leeward?  Who knows...
> >> 
> >> We anchored securely again and actually had a very quiet night at Bone.   In the morning we had the great pleasure to watch a loon with her almost grown baby fishing for their breakfast, which they each succeeded in catching and finished eating at the same time we finished cooking and eating ours.
> >> 
> >> We hoisted the main, sailed off our hook and glided out of the anchorage unfurling the jib as we went… very nice.   The weather was still boisterous… the wind booming in the trees etc so we reckoned we’d go down the inside passages to Chimney Bay, site of last year’s Misery Cruise anchorage.  Down past Sugar and Ship Islands, leaving behind the mouth of the Musquash River, scene of the death of Sandy Grey, a Canadian real life Paul Bunyan style lumberjack who lost his life there in the late 1890’s trying to clear a log jam.  Legend has it his last words were ‘C’mon boys, let’s clear this jam, we’ll have breakfast in hell’.  Well perhaps he did; the place is still called Sandy Grey Falls.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slqVU5tfr_c
> >> 
> >> Away past Orville Wright’s (yes, of the Wright Bros fame) old summer place, to find Penetang Rock with its triangle day marker…  We always call it ‘Pen-tang Try-gangle’ after how our young sons pronounced it.  Broad reaching now we tore down to Honey Harbour, past Picnic Island, the old Delawana Inn, and finally to the narrows at Big Dog Channel.  Wouldn’t you know it there was a stream of big power hogs coming out, so we waited for a break in the traffic then went in.   Coming out the other end of Big Dog, we flipped on the GPS chart plotter in order to have an anxiety-free motor up to Chimney Bay.  There are three rocks rather awkwardly placed, and since the big kabang earlier this year, I’m a little allergic to rocks…
> >> 
> >> Of course all my Luddite fears and predictions came true.  The GPS plotter screen stayed dark… it wouldn’t come on.   Crap… just when you need the damned thing… it’s dead.  Well no big deal really, I quickly took a back bearing on the exit point of the channel, confirmed our position north of there, then scribbled courses and times on course assuming 5kts to thread the hazards.  No problem.   In half an hour we were in behind the little islet in the anchorage, down went the hook again and we settled in. 
> >> 
> >> The wind was really howling, too much and frankly too cold for easy BBQing, so we made a stir fry of sorts in the galley, had a great supper and got the wood stove going.  The boat shook and vibrated in the wind all night but as we were getting used to the tumult and noise, we slept pretty well.  One hard lurch at about 0100 woke us up, but a glance around show the moonlit bay with the thrashing wind all in place… we’d not dragged an inch, so back to bed.  That was the end of Sunday’s action.
> >> 
> >> Monday, after breakfast of pancakes and bacon, we bid farewell the Chimney Bay and sailed for home… well motored for home, the wind had more east in it than made the course an easy one… as we came around Present Island we encountered waves coming up Severn Sound and for awhile we felt like that scene in Das Boot where the surfaced U Boat is punching through and under waves.  Fred aboard SeaMarie looked just like the other U Boat so we waved to him in an exaggerated manner shouting ’TOOOOMMMMSSSSEN!’ TOMSEN!  SO THEY PUSHED YOU OUT TO SEA AGAIN?  As they did in the movie when they realized the other boat was skippered by an old friend…. I was gratified our friends recognized the reference.
> >> 
> >> As we rounded Midland Point the seas calmed, robbed of their fetch, and in due course we glided into the marina next door to the club where we had what might have been the last pump out of the season.  The cute ‘poop chicks’ as I call them, the young women who man the gas/pumpout wharf were cheerful and efficient.   Back over to our club, and a final cup of hot tea before loading back into the car to go home.   
> >> 
> >> It was a great trip, but I’m afraid it doesn’t qualify as a Misery.  For one thing, we brought our girls, for another, it hasn’t been really cold yet, so taken together that means we’ve not yet really done the Misery Cruise for 2020 yet… 
> >> 
> >> Gord Laco
> >> #426 Surprise
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
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-- 
Kris Coward					http://unripe.melon.org/
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