Buoy applications now accepted for Minneapolis Board

OK everyone, it's February, and that means time to think about getting your application in. If you should do it ASAP or not depends on what camp you fall into:
New Buoy Applicants / Non-Minneapolis residents
By all means, do it as soon as possible. The city uses your date of application to grant you place in your selection pool. What pool you are in mostly depends on if you are a Minneapolis resident. See the menu bar on the right for the actual link.
Returning Minneapolis Buoy Applicants
For returning buoy holders, things are not so rushed. Just as long as you get in by April 8th, you will go into the priority pool for your lake, where actual buoy assignments are drawn by lot. That part is random, but you are assured of a buoy. One of the factors that may play into your thinking is that the city will charge your credit card as soon as you apply. Me, I'd rather keep that money in my account until April.

Keeping an eye on the weather and Radios

One of a sailboat skipper's most important jobs is to keep an eye on the weather. Even on small lake like Harriet, summer storms can appear and put a small boat in peril. Even if your boat is capable of handling the rain and high winds, nobody wants to get caught in a electrical storm if it can be avoided.

This fact is one of the reasons I have a link to current and hour-by-hour forecasts for the lake on this site. But what about fast breaking storms? Is there a way we can be warned of them? In a word, yes. The US National Weather Service weather broadcast (NWR) contains codes that can alert special weather radios in a specific area about approaching bad weather. Called SANE, these codes are entered into your radio to mark its general location. For Hennepin County the SANE code is 027053.
Turn your weather radio to station WX1, and you are set to go. The radio sits silent unless there is approaching bad weather, and then you get an alarm followed by an voice alert. Note that not all weather radios support SANE, and if you use one that does not, you get get the alerts for the entire state of Minnesota and western Wisconsin. On any given summer day, the older radios were constantly going off with alerts. It's also a good idea to turn it on and listen to the up-to-the-minute forecast as you rig for sailing.


Some VHF boat radios also support NWR broadcasts, and that raises another issue. Lake Harriet is a small lake, and is completely covered by all of the major cellular operators. Therefore, there is little or no need to use VHF radios for communication. However, the US Coast Guard states that if you have one on your boat, you MUST ALWAYS have your VHF radio on and tuned to Channel 16 when in the boat. Because of the extra battery draw, I'm not sure many (if any) of the boats on the lake with radios do this, myself included.