Cruising Lake Champlain

Duane Nealon is a former member of SLSC and a former Ensign sailor. Duane sold his Ensign to Hunter Currin, also a former member of SLSC, and purchased a DE 32 named the Gracie Emmett. Duane also donated a collection of his sailing library to the club.

The Gracie Emmett was sailed from Long Island to Lake Champlain. The three-part story below chronicles that voyage and provides information about sailing on Lake Champlain.

Lake Champlain Cruising - Part 1

Lake Champlain Cruising - Part 2

Lake Champlain Cruising - Part 3

More information about the Gracie Emmett can be found here.

My father was an active ocean-racer in Britain in the 1950’s and early 60’s. He completed 5 Fastnet races, and a number of others. In mid-December last year, as I arrived at his apartment to be with him in Savannah, my father handed me 3 non-descript little notebooks filled with faint penciled scribbles. Inside were accounts of several of his sailing adventures from the 50’s. When the rest of the family arrived, we read the notebooks aloud in my father’s room, transcribing them, later adding pictures from his photo albums of those voyages. He died over Christmas, very peacefully.   I’d like to think that the accounts of his sailing adventures from his youth, which he enjoyed so much, were some of the last things he heard.

I thought you might enjoy the attached. One is an account of the 1956 race from Cowes to San Sebastian, Spain, on Gypsy Moth III with Francis Chichester. The other is of the 1954 Channel Race, from Cowes, Isle of Wight, to near LeHavre, France, aboard Theta.”

James Nicol
January 2, 2014