Experience Matters

Several years ago my wife and I wanted to bring our sailboat from the Antelope Island Marina to the South Shore Marina on the Great Salt Lake. We knew a storm would be blowing in the next day and wanted to get the task done before it came. We staged a car at the southern marina and then drove to the northern one. We loaded up the boat with ourselves and some winter-weather gear because of the month, February. Then we rigged a few safety devices to help protect us just in case something surprised us. Adding a preventer to the mainsail help ensure we wouldn't break the boat in a sudden wind shift.

The first 15 minutes of the trip went well and the wind filled in nicely. While sometimes you have to use the boat motor on such trips, it looked like we would be able to sail the whole way. At about minute 16, the weather changed dramatically, the storm arrived 15 hours early, and we found ourselves in 60 knots (about 66 miles per hour) of wind pushing us in the direction we wanted to go. Unfortunately our sailboat is not built to handle such wind and things got crazy. We ended up dropping both sails and still scooted along at a blistering 16 knots. That doesn't sound very fast but is 3 times the speed we normally sail.

One would think we had our excitement and once the wind died down all would be well. The wind did die down but then a snowstorm rolled in. I had planned to navigate visually but when the snow started falling, we couldn't see more than a few feet in front of the bow. The large smokestack from the smelter at the south-end of the lake that we aim for quickly disappeared. I had never bothered to install a compass in the cockpit and so I couldn't use that to help me. Ultimately I used the direction of the waves to guide me for the next several hours.

Eventually I could see a vertical line of blinking lights in the distance and hoped it to be the smokestack from the smelter as I knew it had aviation lights to warn low-flying planes. When the depth-finder on the boat went from 20 feet of water to 8 in about 2 feet, I knew I was off course and had to decide between turning hard to the left or hard to the right. I guessed and went right. The guess paid off and we quickly saw the breakwater for the South Shore Marina. We had blindly made it within a couple hundred yards of our final destination. As we continued I could see the expected lights on the smokestack and realized I had been heading towards a radio tower I had never noticed before.

We got into the marina at the south-end of the lake and quickly tied up the boat. I think my wife even kissed the dock once safely off the vessel. We both felt glad to be unharmed and relieved not to have to file an insurance claim for running the boat aground.

The moral of the story is that there is no substitute for experience. Sometimes we think we know something, like navigation but it isn't until we are tested that we know for sure. Since that day, I now know there are two tall objects at the south end of the Great Salt Lake with flashing lights. More importantly I know that the radio tower has brighter lights but the smokestack has 2 lights per row instead of just one. These are things you don't pay attention to on a sunny day. After all, why would you?