Emerald Green Water - August 2, 2006

This past weekend Warren Stewart, his son Whitney, Jack vanArsdale and I had a terrific sail to Port Dover.

The wind at 8:15am on Saturday was a little on the light side, about 5 – 8 knots. We decided to put up all the sail Kelly III has: Twin Genoas and full Mainsail. My homemade whisker pole made from schedule 40 PVC pipe was severely tested as the wind kept increasing and actually bent the pole into a “U” without the pole breaking! Finally, as the wind got to about 12 knots or so, we pulled down the extra genny.

Guy, Whitney, Murph sailing Kelly III

Within an hour or so we began furling the standard genny. By Noon we tied in a reef in the Main, but almost immediately put the 2nd reef into the Main. With the 2nd reef we unfurled the genny to full size, but only for a short while. The wind continued to build and we continued to furl the Genoa. By 1:30pm we were approaching Long Point, but due to the weird, hazy conditions, still could not see Long Point until we were within 1.25 miles of the lighthouse!
We also saw the strangest water color I’ve ever seen in almost 20 years of crossing to Port Dover: There was an almost perfectly straight line from West to East, dividing the dark green water south of Long Point from a very pale, emerald, opaque water coming off of Long Point. My theory is that the sand was being washed off the southern shore of Long Point and the white-capped water kept the sand suspended so that the water off the Point was so pale the green was almost white. 

Emerald Green Water Off Long Point

All of us took turns steering but sometime after Jack took the tiller North of Long Point he took Kelly III to our max speed of the day of 8.3 knots! And this was with a double-reefed main and half-furled genny! My estimate is we were seeing a wind speed about 20 – 25 knots and waves of 2 – 4 feet. We saw the speedo hit rates well over 7 knots with some regularity, but when we checked the GPS, it showed a max speed of 8.3 knots which could only have happened while Jack was steering. Look out Troy! Jack has your record in sight!
Sunday was beautiful, but hot and with no wind at all, so we motored the entire trip back to Erie. Clearly, after the boisterous sail Saturday and the endurance motoring on Sunday, Kelly III is now working great!