Sailing Through a Drought

 

 

(Note: beginning with today’s post I am using a new format.  I hope you like it.  — Steve)

 

In 2007 a baby girl arrived and put my sailing on hold.  We sold the boat shortly after Anna arrived.  If anything could compete with my love of sailing (and win) it was this child.  By 2013 I was desperate to get back on the water and now that Anna was nearly six we had more time for boating.  But Lake Travis was so low I reluctantly stopped the boat search.

Water was so low that all but one or two boat ramps were closed.  Many ended several feet short of the water’s edge like the cliffs in a Looney Tunes episode.  I even considered buying a pop-up camper for my outdoor itch (I didn’t).

Then one day at lunch high above Lake Travis we saw five or six boats sail by on the lake.  I couldn’t believe it.  The bad news I heard had me thinking no boat could sail on that thin water.  (sadly that restaurant, Iguana Grill, is now closed, another casualty of the drought).

I was obviously wrong.  In fact, parts of the Colorado River bottom are over 100 feet deep, even at today’s low level.  My Navionics Boating iPhone app shows a spot a quarter mile from my marina that is 95 feet deep.

My search was back on.  By May I had purchased Wild at Heart, a Hunter 25.5 and bigger brother to our old Hunter 23.

Now two years later the lake is looking even better.  The spring rains have raised the lake ten feet this year alone!

I look forward to even more sailing with my girls Anna and Laura this year.