It’s taken all year, but the queen of the CIBC lakes has rewarded our patience with an epic day of sailing. If we scored cruising this would have been a day of gold. After scouting the broads and finding nothing worse than a few drain holes and some hard snow mounds we headed south. Tip-toeing into the narrows, all looked fine. Bunting, Denis and Frank from Quebec, and myself exploded out of the other end onto much better ice and tons of wind. It’s a broad reach for a couple of miles to Deep Cove and with no nasty hazzards we drove the boats like we’d stolen them.

Deep Cove is one of the prizes of Damariscotta, the other is the River; some call it the southwest arm which sounds not nearly as romantic or mysterious. We beat back to the pits for lunch as it began to snow and the entire visualscape went to shades of lovely grey. Bunting blew out his shoulder and went home, so the three of us went back for more. This time we entered the narrows fully wound up having scouted its weak spots and headed for the River. It is a tricky entry with the wind more north than west and it took a couple of tries. Once we were all in, though, it was sail deep and sail fast. Sometimes the gybes came so quick that you didn’t bother to gybe your head; it just hung out there on the lee side until you gybed again. There was a bit more shell ice down there, but nothing you can’t blow through.

Peter Forbes and Chris Connary showed up around noon and Peter had a couple of laps while Chris set up his Yankee for tomorrow. We have boats on the ice and will sail there tomorrow with whatever wind might be left over from today.

A curious thing happened with the slush this morning, which we should all keep in mind. First, as we all know, slush will harden with temps at freezing. It was 32 here last night. First thing in the morning one could bust through the frozen slush with your heel into a wet layer of slush (not water) below. It looked like a slush runner day. But a couple of hours later you could not break through, and we switched to plate runners. We stayed on plated until the end of the day when the temps reached 37.

Looking at the weather, Wednesday and Thursday look good. Rain and warmth early in the week healed by cold Tuesday night. Could be shaping up for a Spring Fling next weekend. In the Damariscotta Lake Inn can repair some busted pipes this week there will be rooms. Lunch there today, by the way, was excellent, with a nice view of the lake. All part of gold prize day.