Six intrepid sailors showed up at Liberty Lake this morning and had a fine session with all six boats in the water at one time. Everyone had a great time, even when figuring out how to get a snared boat off of the fountain buoy by bumping it with other boats. Don Haines’ custom 17 ft. pole with its “shepherd’s crook” proved very useful for putting boats in the water at an acceptable depth and retrieving them so they didn’t bang against the concrete footings of the little dock at the south end of the lake. It was also just the ticket for shoving boats back into deeper water when they ventured close enough to the shore to get their keels mired in the muck.

This was the maiden voyage of my new “Legend”, and thanks to the good prior advice from Clem, Ron, and Paul, it sailed along for over two hours without a hitch. During that time we had several park visitors and people driving by stop and ask questions about the boats. We even learned that the ladies who worked in the credit union across the street enjoyed watching the boats. The only visitors who did not appear to be happy with six boats at a time in their lake were several large flights of ducks and geese who made strafing runs over the boats, but elected to land further to the north—honking at us loudly enough to deliver their message.

The attached shots show the tranquility of the surface this morning, which actually could have benefited by a bit more breeze. Note that the boats were grouped in this gaggle to get photos of all of them together—we don’t actually make it a practice to sail that closely on purpose!

— Larry