Further Up the Monongahela
September 13, 2009
It was quite simply a glorious day for sailing and, I noted with a little regret, quite possibly the last sailing day of the summer. The Academic term has already started here. Next week I will be in Oxford for a conference. Then there is the G20. Who knows what the weather will be after that? In September 2007, my son Jonathan and I needed wetsuits to keep out the cold, on our first sail on the rivers. That was a level of dedication I no longer felt.
The winds today were perfect, ranging from 4 to 8 mph from the NNW. That is typically what a forecast of 8 mph NNW brings on the river itself. There were also a few moments of calm and other moments with greater gusts that set my little boat hurtling across the water.
The river currents were low. The Allegheny was at 5,000 cubic feet per second and the Mon 1350 cubic feet per second. Looking at the water, I could see no discernible current. The NNW winds blew straight down the Ohio against the feeble current there. These were perfect conditions. So I let the gentle breezes, blowing from my back, carry me to the Point. Indeed I even regretted slightly that the conditions were not a little more challenging.
I like better to sail on the Allegheny, so I started up it. However that means the river course turns from running NW-SE to NE-SW, so that the NNW winds are running across the Allegheny. They are deflected and even blocked by the buildings on its North shore. The winds became erratic and temporarily becalmed me.
This, then, seemed the day to sail up the Mon. Those NNW winds would, I hoped, be blowing straight along the river course and not across it, as they were on the Allegheny. That proved to be correct. I found that the winds were blowing along the Mon, after I rounded the Point, and I had an easy run up the Mon with the wind at my back. I could have gone as far as I wanted. But it seemed prudent to stop at the Liberty Bridge, since I knew there would be a laborious tack back, likely to take twice as long as my trip up the river.
At the Liberty Bridge, I took out my camera while I sailed on. Awkwardly, with tiller and mainsheet in one hand and camera in the other, I shot a photo of the view from my perch on the deck, looking under the Liberty Bridge.
Moments later, the wind picked up suddenly and I had a fearful juggle to get the camera back in its little waterproof box and stowed away. The fuller story of my sail is told by the GPS tracks. My starting point is in the upper left at the Newport marina. The winds are blowing roughly top left to bottom right, roughly from the NW or NNW.
Perhaps the most interesting moment of this little voyage happened early during my brief time becalmed on the Allegheny, just upstream of the Fort Duqesne Bridge.
As I sat there waiting for the wind to revive, a large barge train, pushed by a tug, approached. I now have enough experience to know that there was plenty of time to get out of the way. I pointed my bows to shore, away from the channel the barges would pass through. There was very little wind, so I seemed to crawl too slowly in the water. I took out my paddle, one of the few times ever it was used this summer, and gave the water perhaps ten strokes. That was enough to put me safely out of the barges' course.
This was fun. I furled the sail and lay back on the deck, camera in hand, to photograph these monster barges as they passed in train.
It was a comfy place to sit and take photos, so I let the waves slowly swing the boat around.
Then I turned to the furled sail, to get ready to get underway again.
All in all, it was one of the most peaceful sails I have had on the rivers. Those first difficult sails of early summer are now a quite distant memory. Then everything was new and sometimes alarming. Now the rivers have become familiar. I read the winds and currents with ease. Sailing around the point this day, I noticed the winds changing direction as I sailed. It now seemed effortless just to slowly turn my bows so that the sails kept in good trim and the boat flew over the water.
John D. Norton
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