Foiled Again

What a gorgeous day for a sail, and Ruby, our Bauer 12 daysailer, was ready to hit the water at Willsboro Bay on Lake Champlain...or so we thought!

We are getting really efficient at putting up the mast and rigging the boat, all in about 15-20 minutes. As we put up the sails and headed through the anchorage, a few clouds started peeking out over the mountains. I even commented to Dave that I hoped they were 'happy clouds', but the captain assured me they were, since there was only 20% chance of rain.

So off we sailed near Willsboro Bay Marina, taking turns at the helm.

We even found fellow sailing club members, Heinz and Jacqueline's sailboat, but unfortunately they weren't on board. Their dock neighbor told us they were in Maine, and we figured that they were visiting other members, Janet and Philip.

We anchored under sail (Ruby has no motor), and ate our picnic lunch....rather quickly. The watchful sailors that we are, we kept an 'eye to the sky' (despite the prediction), and here come those pesky dark clouds, aimed right for us.

We sailed around for awhile longer, staying close to the launch ramp, but more clouds were building.

We cut our trip short, hauled the boat out of the water, and decommissioned the mast and sails. Just as I was attaching the trailer tie downs, the first drops of rain began to fall.

Since we had such an abbreviated sailing adventure, we decided to take a bit of a road trip and explore the shoreline near Keeseville. We found a great little park and launch ramp, but by then the wind had kicked in at about 20 knots. Instead, we watched Molly the flying wonder dog, play Frisbee with her owner (who said Molly would love to do this all day).

On the way back to Ticonderoga, we got a bit lost and ended up on two different tiny roads that we hoped would lead us back to Rt. 22. It sure is unnerving to read 'PAVEMENT ENDS', especially when trailering a boat! Dave remembers seeing the name of the street we were on, on the main road, so we kept on going through downpours of rain and bumpy, washed out, dirt trails, with Ruby bouncing along behind us. All we could do was laugh and hope that if we broke down, someone would find us before the winter snows arrived. Ha!

The road finally became paved again and obviously we made it back. Another adventure when we "made lemonade out of lemons!"