Lake Calhoun is the biggest lake in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and part of the city's Chain of Lakes. Surrounded by city park land and circled by bike and walking trails, it is popular for many outdoor activities. The lake has an area of 401 acres (1.62 km2) and a maximum depth of 87 feet (27 m). It is also home for Keelboat Sailing lessons, hosting the Calhoun Yacht Club and the Calhoun Sailing School. The lake is popular for sailing races, canoeing, kayaking and windsurfing.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment