Soles for Sails

Bare feet and sailboats have gone together for a long, long time. Particularly when materials were all-natural and got quite uncomfortable when wet, got slippery, and rotted, bare feet were the obvious choice.

This is pretty-well documented, as I wrote in More Barefoot Sailors.

In fact, let me reproduce one of the photos from there, from an 1890 article in Scribner’s Magazine by Rufus Zogbaum.

Aloft, Topmen!

All that was just an introduction to show a few photos from a little sail I did Tuesday.

I have a small, sloop-rigged dinghy (or skiff), a 14-foot O’Day Javelin. I took it out on Buckeye Lake, which is a reservoir (originally dammed for the Ohio and Erie Canal) about 12 miles to the east of me.

Of course, I’ve never sailed it any way other than barefoot.

The Buckeye Lake community is more shod than you’d think. Many of the restaurants have shoe signs. Many of the boaters also wear shoes. You’d think that a place based on a lake would be more forgiving, but they too have been infected by the shoddie meme.

One thing that’s fun about sailing Buckeye Lake is looking at the houses. It’s been there for so long that the properties are cheek by jowl.

Heading Out Along Lieb’s Island

This is near the boat launch. We’re looking under my mainsail.

By the way, about 10 years ago, the Ohio Park Service put up a light pole at the boat launch. Nice idea. But it was poorly executed—the power line ran right over the launch itself.

Now, the way you launch a sailboat at these locations is that you put up the mast in the parking lot, carefully put the boat in the water, and then finish rigging it with the sails and rudder.

This does not work if there is a power line overhead. (Duh!)

Actually, when the line went in, I hadn’t noticed it. Somehow when I put my boat into the water, I missed it, but when pulling it back out, I got hung up on it. Yoicks!

In an example of everyday activism (once an activist, always an activist), I contacted the Park, they realized their error, and made sure to fix it. For the short term, they put up a highly-visible warning sign; then after they got it funded, they buried the line.

Back to the sail. Here’s a better look at the density of houses along the shore.

The North Shore

These houses are actually built on top of the dam.

Here’s a close up where you can see that the older houses are now mixed in with new construction.

The Houses

Those new, fancier houses replace older houses that were torn down to make way.

While there are exciting times while tacking or doing a beam reach, there is also time to just sit back and laze.

Wing-on-Wing

In this one I’m going directly downwind, so I’ve got my sails wing-on-wing. My mainsail is to the left and my jib is to the right. This maximizes sail area.

It is quite stable to sail like this, so I was able to put a cushion behind me, stretch out, and catch some sun.