Overnighting at Raystown Lake PA.

We had our first overnight experience in our MacGregor 26S at Raystown Lake Pennsylvania. This was in July of 2003. We have some friends that were spending a week there camping. We decided to join them and to stay on our boat for the week.

Raystown Lake is supposed to be the largest lake in PA. But, it is a narrow, winding lake. It is approximately 28 miles long but not much more than half a mile wide.

When we arrived at the lake, we made our way to the ramp. The thing we noticed however was that we did not see a single sailboat. This concerned us a bit. There were lots of houseboats, power boats and personal watercraft but no sailboats. We asked several people who worked at the grounds and they told us they could not remember seeing a sailboat there. We would find out later why this was the case.

We found a spot by the ramp to setup the mast and such then waited in line behind a number of power boaters, a rather impatient bunch. We finally launched and made or way back to the campsite area to claim our spot on the water. We would let one anchor out at the stern and tie the bow to a post on the shore. We used a small dinghy to get back and forth to shore. Due to rocks, we were probably 30 yards from shore.

Our friends had a couple of campsites nearby so although we were prepared to live strictly onboard we actually ate at the campsite most of the time.

The next day we went out to sail. Well, we found out why there were no sailboats. Raystown Lake is a man made lake in the valley of some mountains. The sides of the lake are steep and high. There are cuts in the mountains where the winds funnel through. It all resulted in the winds whipping around in circles over the lake. We could not tell what direction the wind was coming from much of the time. And when we would finally find the direction, it would change 180 degrees. In our short sailing experience, we had not seen anything quite like it. We sailed with a reefed main to help keep the boat in control.

The good news was that it was a lot of fun staying on the boat. The Macgregor has a king sized bed under the cockpit providing plenty of space for sleeping. We had a few nights where thunderstorms came and blew us around a bit but all in all it was nice. We finally had a taste of what it was going to be like cruising on our boat.

During the rest of the week we did a lot of motoring when we wanted to get around, occasionally flying just the jib in light air if the wind was mainly behind us.