• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Looking at my teak.

D

Dave R

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:D

Went for a sail yesterday. It was absolutely gorgeous.




This is a shot looking up Lake Pepin. It's the wide spot in the Mississippi River. Minnesota on the left, Wisconsin on the right. The bluff extending out farthest on the Wisconsin side is called Maiden Rock. The story is that the father of a lovely Indian maiden wouldn't allow her to marry the young man with whom she was in love so she threw herself off that bluff.

On the other side is Point No Point. As you go up the river it looks like there is a point there but it also seems like you'll never round it.

You can see those two landmarks better in this photo from our last sailing day last year.
 
Lovely views
There's a TV programme in the UK called River Monsters - you have some very nasty fish in your waters including giant catfish and Bull Sharks?

Rod
 
There are some catfish in the Mississippi River but they don't bother anyone. They tend to lay in the water below dams and eat stuff that comes down. They aren't people eaters but they are good eating. We don't have to worry about sharks. They are salt water only and don't wander this far up the river.

There is supposed to be a monster in Lake Pepin, though, called Pepie. I've never seen it and it's never been annoying or anything. ;)

Here's a map showing Lake Pepin. Our boat is kept in the marina at Lake City. Maiden Rock is the slight bulge just below '35' and Point No Point is the bulge just above Frontenac.

lakepepinmap.JPG
 
Dave R":1a7zf3qw said:
There is supposed to be a monster in Lake Pepin, though, called Pepie. I've never seen it and it's never been annoying or anything. ;)
Click to expand...

So that's where the Loch Ness Monster goes for its vacation..

Apart from cruise ships and sightseeing trips I'm not a boating person but I do appreciate a nice bit of scenery... and that looks pretty good :)
 
That's kind of what I was thinking about Nessie. ;)

FWIW, I live about 30 miles down that yellow line that goes southwest out of Lake City.
 
Aaaah, very nice indeed!
You are lucky to have such a large place to go sailing.

We used to go sailing with friends on the Vaal Dam many years ago. The chap built a 30 footer with a cabin to sleep two with a head in the front. The problem with the Vaal Dam was if the level dropped too low it restricted your sailing area, and that was generally towards the end of winter before the summer rains.

I bought a Sprog racing dinghy sail number 393, all wood. Myself and the two boys fitted on it comfortably for about two years and then it got too small.

The local lake is not that big and very challenging to sail as it was surrounded by lots of trees and buildings and the wind changed direction every couple of hundred meters.

The eldest son would steer and I would handle the sails. We did a few flips over onto the side, but well organised to get back up and running in a few minutes.

Very good outdoor fun.

Cheers
Phil
 
Phil, any day out the water is a good one, though. ;)

We can get variable winds on the lake especially if it is out of the south or southwest because there are high bluffs. The coulees create a wind tunnel effect and in between, the the shadows of the bluffs, it can be nearly dead calm. On those days you can go like a cat with its tail alight and suddenly almost come to a halt. It's best to sail on the far side of the lake from where the wind is coming to stay out of the variable stuff.
 
Some great shots, Dave, and a beautiful boat. :mrgreen:
 
Some of the best fun I have had on holiday has been sailing. In boats like this
41_WP_20130805.jpg

Sail boats on the norfolk broads, constant tacking and wind changes due to winding rivers and trees. Hard work but great fun.

Oh and lowering the mast to go under the bridges without stopping was hair raising but great fun.

Any full length shots of your boat Dave?
 
Andy, I've always thought that sailing on the Norfolk Broads must be a great deal of fun.

As for pictures of my boat, I don't have any of it sailing. Mostly because I'm always on it when it is sailing and no one else has taken any photos of it, at least that I know of. Here's one of it in the slip from a long time ago. We no longer use the blue covers, on the cabin top or wheel.

 
Well your safe for a while Dave, Bull Sharks have only been spotted as far as Illinois! :)
Those catfish can reach to be 125lbs and about 7' long - must pick up a lot of food on the lake/river bottoms?

Rod
 
I expect those bull sharks coming up as far as Illinois are pretty rare. I'd also expect they'd have difficulty navigating the 20 or so locks between St. Louis and Lake Pepin. ;)

I don't think those huge catfish are worth eating although I expect that some folks do. Catfish are good fighters so fun to catch but they have sharp barbs so you have to use great caution removing the hook. The bleed like a stuck pig when you cut them open for filleting, too.
 
There's another species of fish we're a bit concerned about. They are commonly known as Asian carp or Silver carp. It's an invasive species that purportedly escaped from a commercial fish farm. They are amazing jumpers and seem to be stimulated by motorboats running on the rivers. They are quite thick in stretches of the Illinois River. They're big enough they can knock a guy out of his boat. There's at least one group that takes paying folks out to bow hunt them. I'm guessing they don't take many fish that way, though. If you search YouTube for 'Asian carp' you'll get a lot of videos of them.
 
So when does she go out again, in the spring?

The River Monsters man also went fishing for slightly smaller catfish in the USA where you stick your arm into their underwater nests where if you're "lucky" they grab it. You then pull them out - If not it pulls you under!!??

Rod
 
Usually the boat goes back into the water in June. Exactly when depends on things like what I need to do to the boat while it is out of the water--this past spring I renewed the bottom paint--and the water level on the lake. It was extremely high this past spring due to heavy snows upstream and heavy rain in the early spring. When there's a lot of water coming down it tends to flush things like trees, old steel drums and furniture down into the lake. That stuff tends to lurk just below the surface and can be quite a hazard.

Catching catfish by hand--kanoodling. Not something i'd be interested in but some folks like it. It's more of a down-south red neck, hold-my-beer-and-watch-this thing :D
 
Yes. It is kind of short but we do try to make the best of it.
 
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