Day 3, June 29th: Telemachus Morphs to McGuyver….Wins Adyrondaque Kup!

The third day of a long row is too soon to be able to say that you’ve established a routine or rhythm but as we broke camp at Essex on Saturday morning, patterns were emerging.

First, neither of us was going to be breakfast guys; a breakfast bar and a cup ‘o joe from the burner seemed to be enough to get us into the boats and going without longing or complaint.

Second, there’d be no dawdling; mornings are typically calm, and Matt and I felt a shared urgency to get on it…especially on this particular morning at Essex where Champlain widens and where a headwind or crosswind on the wide waters could make for very tough going. Senator Patrick Leahy would say that we had a great lake in front of us and he’d be right even if he was overruled for Great Lakes funding. (Senator, put any of your colleagues into a 15 foot Adirondack Guideboat and push him/her out onto Champlain and I bet you’ll win a vote.)

Finally, by Day Three, stuff begins to find its home. Once one is in the seat, the arrangement of items in the boat becomes paramount to safety, comfort, and convenience, and it takes a couple of days for a pecking order for the relative importance to emerge. Beverages and ice must be easily accessible while underway but they weigh a lot so the boat’s center of gravity must be considered, along with convenience. Rain gear, sun goop, batteries, a flare, and a whistle must be close at hand along with a life jacket when you’re not wearing it, along with the little transistor radios we carried. All of these little bits called for attention and careful placement. The tent, sleeping bag, air mattress, and warm clothes on a hot day could safely be stored out of the way in the bow or stern without affecting performance or comfort. They don’t weigh much individually but they’re bulky. Keeping the deflated air mattress closer at hand soon made sense since it could be used as a bolster during infrequent rest stops. I carried the edible stores as well, a weighty sea bag holding the burner and vital Via packs, dry-pack tuna, beef jerky, five dehydrated meals “just in case,” a large can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew (a key victual later in this story), granola and breakfast bars, dried fruits, and of course, Raisinettes ®. Lots of Raisinettes ®, but never enough. 

We pushed off early and were immediately rewarded by a nice southerly breeze and building waves from astern, just the kind of weather that can make a one hundred mile lake seem manageable. Morphing from Telemachus into McGuyver, Matt soon pulled up on a sandy delta at the mouth of the Bouquet River and went to work with what he’d collected along the way: some nylon twine, the length of PVC pipe from Crown Point, a broom handle, and the rain tarp from my tent. Larry Ellison’s money and technical genius may have changed the America’s Cup forever, and Matt can lay claim to having turned this leg of our journey into a kind of Addyrondaque’ Kup. His rig wouldn’t win a Concourse de’ Elegance, but it caught a lot of wind and moved his boat smartly. I lofted my own pusher rig kept handy for rare following breezes, and we spent much of the day efficiently “motorsailing” north behind a kind wind from the south.

Are we the last great superpower, or what??

We stopped at Willsboro Bay for lunch; we may not have been breakfast guys, but we’d hunt ruthlessly for mid-day game. While ashore, Matt collected more bits for SailPlan Iteration 2.0® which added a salty looking “Master and Commander” spar across the top of the broom handle.  When Matt launched from the dock after lunch, a guy in a big cruiser asked me, “Hey, pal, where do you get a rig like that?” I could honestly reply, “From the dumpsters between here and Ticonderoga.”

Recycle, re-use….relax.

The day’s row went well until the wind shifted from southerly to westerly. Say what you will about our cobbled-together sailing rigs, but don’t say that they allow for a beam reach. Our boats are not keelboats. We spent the last several hours pulling for Mooney Bay through a pretty tough crosswind, so we angled to the shore and caught the protection of the New York side as we arrived at dusk after 38.2 miles.

At the Mooney Bay Marina, hospitality takes the curious if effective form of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Our hostess (lovely lady, great restaurant, brilliant green drink, fabulous Chicken Parm….need the carbs!!) said that we might find a spot out back for our tents, and we might find the men’s room over there available to us…and we might meet an Authority Figure along the way and if we did, we all might forget that we ever had this conversation, right?

This kind of hospitality got us on land for the night, fattened with C-Parm and pasta and placing Canada within easy reach tomorrow.

"Finish your greens, dad"