Performance when reefed

[oldiesrocker2001]

dry sailed in clinton

Hi Scott, My boat is 'dry sailed' at Spruce run over in clinton (I live in somerset county about 1/2 hour away). Except for years that the boat is travelling(florida a couple years ago; lake george this year)I rig it on the trailer once per season and break it down once. Nobody that uses Spruce run has been able to get a straight answer to the regular draining of water starting in early august despite our parking spaces being good till the end of october. I was out today and all docks have been removed and I had to launch/recover on the gravel in between launch ramps to keep from running up on the tire-stoppers at the end of the 'real'ramps. Same condition 2 years ago when the entire county was declared a disaster area due to torrential rains!
Back to reefing setup: My main is not a single line reefing but has padeye and cheek block at the stern end of the boom(didn't get a pic of it today)leading to a cleat midway on the boom. These boom end fittings are back several-maybe six-inches from the rear grommet. I still have to go forward to the front grommet padeye which is pretty much directly under the front grommet. When I fire up my home office computer I can post a few pics showing the wrinkle in the sail regardless of haylard tension. In fact as I was snapping the last pic I heard the thunder in the background and dropped the sail from it's reefed position and headed for the 'dock area' as fast as 4 HP could take me against the wind. Before I even got up to speed the errant sail slug had already slipped out of the flared gate above it(remember the sail isn't up). This makes me wonder if I need to sew another lower slug to stay in main channel.
I may yet consider a different place to sail from in the future. When I had my O'Day type 17, I would occasionally bring it to round valley(10 min from Spruce Run) where it was usually full but 'wide open' and nowhere to hide if it gets ugly as it has, indeed, earned it's "graveyard" nickname.Is there a lot of shallow water at hapatcong? Sorry for the long post...

 

[Scott]

Well, I left early today ...

and got home by 3 so we could do some sailing, but the thunder and rain is hanging around right now, and my wife is in a bad mood because her son's brand new tire had a sidewall blow-out this morning and Sears is not owning-up to any responsibility! If both storms pass , maybe we can have a decent evening, but I just now heard the nearby crack of lighting as I'm writing this so the prospects aren't good!

That is sort of an odd question about Lake Hopatcong. The depth of the lake throughout the entire area that we sail is anywhere from 35 feet to 50 feet deep and the shorelines are relatively steep so deep water is only a few feet off the shoreline in almost all locations. There are a few areas of the lake that are shallow but they are so deep into the coves that it doesn't matter. There is one area between Raccoon Island and Halsey Island that gets about 10 to 15 feet deep, but I haven't had any reason to be concerned about grounding just about anywhere on the lake that I can sail. The Lake Forest section has shallow water along the shorelines but that section is north of the Brady bridge so you can't get there with a sailboat anyway. We skirt by many points of land and get within 50' of shore and are still in 30' of water.

The water level is also about as consistent as it can be for the 20 years that I have been watching it. They lower the lake a couple of feet every winter but they don't start dropping the water level until very late in October, so the water is often still quite high into November. I've been concerned about the level at the end of the season on occasion because if it gets a couple of feet low, it would be difficult to get my boat to the position where it needs to be at Barnes to be lifted out, but they never seem too concerned so they must have a back-up plan! The ramps at Lee's Park are always useable even when the water level gets low sometimes in the fall.

We seem to be in a climate that is pretty immune to draught. And since the lake is not used as a drinking water reservoir, the water level never drops like you see it in the reservoirs. There was one spring a few years ago that there was some talk about diverting water from Lake Hopatcong to the Rockaway River because the Jersey City resevoirs were getting so low, but the rains came back in the nick of time and that foolishness never went any further!