My little 14’ Lido sailboat that I got off of craigslist. I’m relatively new to sailing but I do enjoy the challenge of harnessing natural forces for propulsion, as well as the very low cost of ownership compared to a motorboat.
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Shag Rock? Shag Head, baby. And who would be so angry with a pig to name something Effingham? What story is this all from?
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My family was lamenting that all the local places are sold out of wading pools due to the ongoing heat wave and then the Trumpists at Lake Travis reminded me that watercraft can be reversible.
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HA! Brilliant!
used to do this for my kids until our dog made it his and absolutely destroyed it in his most playful style. It was actually quite a scene.
Made my daughter laugh until she figured out the pool-boat was done for, then she cried 
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I’ve got a vinyl repair kit so I think we’ll be OK 
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It was a lovely day today, so I took MV Smol out for her first run of the Spring.
Ready to go:
Just off the ramp:
The infamous Shag Rock. At high tide, it’s completely submerged and likes to eat ships:
Looking back to Beauty Point from Middle Arm:
Just as I got into Middle Arm, I found a ridiculously huge stingray; about 2m across. Shortly after that, a seal arrived and came within a few metres of the boat. Unfortunately, this was the best picture I could get; he was only popping up for air, not basking:
Cute house on the shores of Middle Arm:
Port Dalrymple Yacht Club:
The Maritime College:
Clarence Point:
Funky tidal whirlpools. For much of the time I was fishing, MV Smol was spinning like a top:
Safe and sound back home:
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Have you had the joy of recovering from a capsize yet? 
My Dad and I used to flip our old racing Heron on a very regular basis. You can never have too much sealed floatation built in; not just for avoiding sinking, but also for reducing the amount of bailing required after an oopsy.
Dealing with high winds when there’s 100kg of water sloshing around the boat is a very challenging form of fun. It’s worth practising on a calm day if you get the chance.
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Out in MV Smol again.
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That is awesome! I don’t think there is a better sport to do with your kids.
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Cruising in Lake Superior yesterday I came across one of the most beautiful places I have been to by chance. This place is called Pictured Rocks.
Here is the site for the park. I cant believe I had never heard of this place.
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Speaking of Shag Rock and Point Effingham…
There are two regular irritations when navigating around Clarence Point.
The river is covered in primarily red and green navigation markers; the basic rule is “red right return”, AKA “keep the red ones on your right and the green ones on your left when you’re heading downstream and returning to sea”.
Unfortunately, things can get a bit ambiguous when two branches of the river connect. The green marker circled in blue near Orari Bank is intended to tell ships in the main channel to stay east of it, but when you’re coming out of West Arm it can be mistaken for one telling you to head south of it. Which runs you straight into the Ilfraville mud flats.
The other issue is Shag Rock. Big ships always stay east of it, steering a course from Orari Bank that heads between Shag Rock and Point Effingham. OTOH, small vessels headed into West Arm from downriver tend to take the narrow channel between Shag Rock and Clarence Point.
But while the southeast edge of Shag Rock is marked by a large green piling, the northwest edge just has a little floaty flag, which is quite easy to lose in the background:
Shag Rock itself is visible at low tide but completely submerged at high. But even at high tide, it’s shallow and chunky enough to severely fuck up even a shallow-draft boat.
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If you think that is confusing you should try the US Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway. It goes along the entire east coast with hundreds of inlets from the ocean. The markers on the ICW reverse as soon as you go past an inlet except not always. I just did the entire thing from Miami to New Jersey and it was a nightmare to try and keep the markers staight. Ikept having to look at my Navionics track to see to what side of the marker it was to see if I was considered to be “departing” or “returning”.
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That looks a lot like a scaled-down version of the boat my dad built from an Edson I. Schock design in the 1960s— hard chine plywood construction, fractional rig. His was 15 ft. long, and actually hard, but not impossible, to flip.
I later had a Laser that was the epitome of flippability, but of course the Laser is designed to spill most of the water in the cockpit as you right it. I got so I could step out onto the daggerboard, start the boat coming upright, and step back into the cockpit without getting wet much above the knees.
I learned just the opposite, that “returning” means returning to harbour or going upstream. Is it possible that things go the other way in Australia, like the water in the toilet bowl? 
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Everywhere except the Americas, Japan, South Korea, the Phillipines, Hawaii and Easter Island does it as Oz does.
Y’might notice that the exceptions are places that see a lot of USN traffic.
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Successful boat maintenance!
I noticed that the telltale was no longer pumping water when I brought the boat back in the other day. No major drama; just a bit of mud clogging the pipes.
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Congratulations on the Lido 14. I don’t know them at all but I understand they are a classic and popular class. May I suggest hanging out with other Lido sailors? Or even crewing for them. The fastest way (and I think bestest) to learn is to race.
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I didn’t know that. I’m amazed to find that the convention only dates to 1982.
"Surprisingly, [in1971] there were 30 different buoyage systems in use throughout the world. The disparity … prompted the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) to implement a standard, the Maritime Buoyage System. This system, ratified in 1982, consolidated the 30 systems into two."
And why not one system, pray tell? That’s like having a red light mean “stop” in some parts of the world, and “go” in others. The IALA members seem to have missed the “International” part of their title.
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I suspect that the answer to that is something pretty close to “the rest of the world agreed on one system, but the US Navy sees no reason to change what they’re used to”.
The direction of “return” also kinda illuminates a basic philosophical aspect of seafaring:
a) Are ships things that live in port and sometimes go to sea, or
b) Are ships things that live at sea and sometimes go to port?
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In the case of my boat, it’s a) for sure. 
But that raises another question. Does “return” refer to the ship or the sailor?
"Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."
– Robert Louis Stevenson, Requiem
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