Arctic Outflows and Snow

January 16th (Thursday)

The arctic outflow winds continued to howl last night. There were some especially strong gusts that pushed our boat hard away from the dock, and when she pulled tight on her dock lines it made the boat rock under the strain. The noise of the creaking, frozen dock lines, and the bumping fenders, kept us awake for part of the night as the wind whistled through our rigging. In the morning, when we checked our dock lines, we noticed how much our breast line, in particular, had worn away at the 4x4 that we are tied to on the dock. Our lines were undamaged, but the wood on the dock was showing the wear.  

It snowed quite hard on and off over the past night, and at times we could hear it hitting our boat. It was being driven along so fast by the wind that it sounded more like it was brushing across our deck rather then actually landing on it. In the morning, the most of the snow’s accumulation on our boat was actually inside our enclosure. The wind had blown the snow in through every little corner or flapping zipper-cover, and mini drifts had formed inside. And, our dock was almost as bare as it had been the previous night because all of the snow had blown right off of it. The ice skirts that have been slowly growing around the base of our fenders were beautifully covered in snow.  

Up in town, certain areas were blown clean, but in many areas the drifts were quite deep. All of our footprints from the previous days were covered over, and it was a much deeper traipse up through the snow to the lake. 

Ice at the dam.

We had to be careful because there were many areas of slick ice along our path. Up until today, we could see these areas, but today they had been fully covered over, and so if we did not recognize the area in advance we would suddenly find ourselves trying to walk uphill on slick ice. 

Up at Link Lake we tried a bit of fishing, curious to see if we would get any bites.  We did not try for long as the wind quickly wicked our warmth away from us as we stood out in the open on the dock, and we did not get any bites. Perhaps we will try again on a calmer or warmer day. 

 Ice at Link Lake.

We hiked up into the forest following a different trail than we had taken yesterday to Lost Lake. The trail went up and up through the beautiful snowy forest, and we got up high enough that as the clouds parted for a bit, we were actually up in the sunshine.  

Part way up the trail, we got a lovely view down to Link Lake through the trees, and we could see the lake’s two arms branching off into the distance. I think that the trail would have kept going, and maybe even have given us some more beautiful views, so we will explore it further another day.

We turned around mid-afternoon, and made our way back home. It has been wonderful how dry the snow has been. It really is great to be able to go out and hike, and then come back almost completely dry. It sure makes it easier for putting everything away on board.  

Our power went out again in the evening, and it seemed to be at around the same time as both yesterday and the first day. This time, we made a note of the time that it went out so that we will be able to compare it on future days if the power goes out again. This was the third day that these power outages had happened, and as it rapidly got cooler and cooler inside, and we considered getting a fire going, we waited for it to come back on, as it always had.  

Eventually, after it had been off for longer than usual, Jason suggested that we have a look to see if the light at the top of our dock was in fact out. When I stuck my head out, I could see immediately that the power was actually still on for the marina, and that it was just us who had no power. We had simply assumed that it was the power source that was the issue after all of the times that it had gone out previously. The funny thing was, I think out of all of the nine times that the power had gone out, this was the first time that we did not immediately look out to check that the whole dock was dead, and it was also the first time that we saw that we were the only ones. Oh well, at least we checked eventually. Jason bundled up and went out onto the dock. Although all of the breakers were on, he moved our shore power plug to a different outlet and it worked. We decided that we would have a better look at the problem in the daylight the next day.