The Week Long Sail begins.

One by one the ships will leave the harbor.  Old friends will do once more what some of us have done for over thirty years.  The sailboats will head west to explore and enjoy Lake Sakakawea.  It seems to take one week to get ready to do one week on the lake.  Ice, ice, and ice must be made.  Food, lots of food.  Drink of every sort, rum, vodka, gin, beer, and wine.  Goodies, that women pirates appear with on deck.  There will be swimming, snoring, flies, maybe a rattlesnake, and storms.  There will be days with too much wind, too little wind, wind from the wrong direction.  That is sailing.  There will be people sitting around the campfire.  There will be Doc mixing mojitos.  There will be people hiking Quinn's Crack, the famous route to the top in the Badlands.

Lots of old hands will be making the trip, and a few newer explorers.  It is a time to get to know the nooks and crannies of the lake.  With the lake high the fleet will be able to go way back into the best places.  When the big storm comes and the boats are all tied together in a huddle back in a bay it may be a Chinese fire drill or it may be a case of good planning that means merely going below and sitting it out.

So if you are near the lake in the next week and you see about a dozen boats working their way west it is the hard core sailors who have been looking fruitlessly for a Northwest Passage for 30 years.  Lewis and Clark led the way on the exact same route.  If we only read their journal we would know mountains block the way, but sailing around in a state of confusion is pleasant and who really cares?

Now if the wifi works and Kadizzle gets inspired he may fire off a report from the trip. With modern technology you are never really gone.