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My sailing history is pretty brief:
Thailand 1966: Osprey 17' I think I spent most of the time huddled in the bottom of the boat... The Snipe is an old design that was once popular. But never here in Canada. It was designed as more of an ocean boat and was intended to climb up the face of waves. This is a good idea in the ocean where you have big, long waves. But on lakes with their short choppy waves, life is a lot easier if you slice into the waves instead of banging and crashing into them. But we loved it anyways! The 80 lb. solid steel centerboard made it very stable and forgiving. Asis and I spent several summers out in the Snipe. We did a lot of sailing. Never tipped. Not sure if the boat would have ever come up again, even after we installed flotation in it. I remember the major drama sailing heeled over far enough that water poured into the cockpit. Not a good thing with no flotation and an 80 pound steel center board. We did enter one race officially (as opposed to going out and bothering the boats which really were racing!). Apparently there was one other Snipe in the race, a fiberglass one. Not a genuine wood and canvas boat like ours! We also rescued all kinds of flotsam from the lake and attempted to restore it. It doesn't look like I have any photos of the "Firebird". I chose the name because I couldn't resist the symetry. We had two cars, a Firebird and a Snipe. Now we had two boats, a Firebird and a Snipe. It was a clapboard dingy that someone had set adrift out on the lake, expecting it to sink and be gone. We could tell this from the holes hammered through the bottom of the hull. But, we rowed out into the lake and towed it home. I patched the holes, removed the rotten wood, built a centerboard box, a centerboard and a mast. Claude Brunet's mother from across the street donated some old bedsheets (they weren't "PermaPrest", so she had no use for them!) and I sewed up some sails. We then went for a sail. But, it leaked pretty badly around the centerboard box. We had to bail furiously the whole time we were out. And somehow I had gotten the weather-helm all wrong, and it wouldn't really sail into the wind. So back to the drawing board and try to fix the leaks with fiberglass stuffed up into the cracks around the centerboard box. Never really had a chance to complete the project because we left Montreal. But, before we did, Gran and Gramp visited us in 1970. We drafted Gramp, a painter by profession to help get the Snipe back in shape.
New paint for the Snipe. We then treated him to a ride in it. He wasn't that thrilled about it...
Graham rowed him out in the dingy, while I got the boat rigged.
We're off!
Life on the open sea! Of course, all good things come to an end. We left Montreal and left our Snipes behind. Here are both of them, 5 years later, awaiting a restoration that never came...
Lots of sailing in the SeaSpray. Lots of silly things too, like sailing around Isle Perrot and having to "shoot the rapids" under the bridge. We would have gone down the locks but we didn't have the $5. We had a wonderful old house on Lac St.Louis. The boat was achored just off our rocky shore.
We paddled out to it in a Laser.
Graham and I paddling out for a sail. We had to rig the boat in the water, sometimes this was very challenging in the wind and waves.
Then we were off to join the flotilla already out on the lake. At this point, the lake is about 7 miles wide. Buoys on the far side of the lake marked out the wide channel that made up the St. Lawrence Seaway at this point, so we could sail over to and around some of the big boats coming through. None of this "Sail has right of way over powered vessels"!
Off to join the flotilla! Saskatchewan 1983: SeaSpray 15' Sean Pratt (and his unknowing father, Brian) provided us with a cabin and a catamaran. I took the catamarn, a SeaSpray out numerous times. Although it was designed to be sailed solo, I am not quite heavy enough to do so in big winds, which is when I like to go out sailing. So, I went out quite a few times with Bill Wallace. I have two vivid memories of sailing this SeaSpray. The first is being WAY out on the lake with Bill in howling winds. Then a stay snapped, and the whole mast fell overboard. We gathered up the sail and wrapped things up as best we could. Luckily, home was basically downwind, so Bill was able to stand and hold the jib in the air, and we sailed home in pieces. The second is taking my wife to be out, also in howling winds. I had given her zero instructions before heading out, planning on filling her in later. Somehow, before we even left the sheltered little bay, the wind hit us, and she fell overboard. But she fell overboard forwards, and the boat passed over her. Somehow, I thought she must have been entangled in some sheets, lines, ropes or whatever, and figured that I had better jump in to help untangle her. I wasn't particularly worried, she is a good swimmer and we were both in life jackers. Once in the water, I discovered that she was fine. Then I looked at the cat... It was also fine. BUT, instead of turning into the wind and waiting for us like a nice little catamaran, it somehow wrapped a line around the tillers, holding then straight, and the mainsail in. It put itself up nicely on one hull, and screamed across the little bay. I looked at Sandy and we started swimming after it. As long as it didn't hit anything hard, it should come out none the worse for the wear. Luckily, it buried itself in some reeds half a kilometer away. Relieved, we both continued swimming as two groups of people on shore figured we needed help. One powerboat came out to rescue us (much to our embarrassment!) and the other went to rescue the cat. We thanked everyone, climbed back on board and thought about continuing our sail. Sandy no longer had any enthusiasm for it... and probably no confidence in me either. So we headed back to the cabin and dried off. Saskatchewan : 1996 to present: HobieCat 16' Take a look at the rest of these pages! This no longer qualifies as "Olden Days"! |
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Click on images with borders for a bigger, better one! Email me! warren.long@shaw.ca Go to Warren&Sandy's HomePage |
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