The Pirate’s Plunder Regatta

Join us for the Pirates’ Plunder on Oct. 27.   Skippers meeting at 11:00 am with racing soon after  And, in the spirit of the Halloween season, we are encouraging members to let their inner pirate out to play  for the evening!  Pirate garb encouraged with best dressed getting a bottle of grog. Land-lubbers will walk the plank, into the icy cold Barren. Hope you’ll get your eye patch and peg-leg out and meet up with the other swashbucklers!  Dinner around 5:00 pm. We will provide meat and members can bring sides.

The Great Minnow Regatta

October 13th and 14th .. Saturday Breakfast at 9:30AM with asymmetrical pancakes by Leah.and mimosas. 10:30AM Skippers meeting with racing after, $25 race fee for skippers, $10 for crew and non racers. Dinner will be around 5pm. Troy is doing meats and Leah will have baked beans and slaw.. Please bring a dessert.. Live music on Saturday.. More later

The Shocking Story of the Flying Spiders

If you have sailed on Barren River Lake for a while, you have probably seen spider webs floating in the air across the Lake.  They are the same ones that get tangled up with your wind vane, causing it to malfunction. Where are those webs coming from? Spiders, of course.  But why?spiders_ballooning

If you think that they are just surplus webs that break away from trees and other objects, think again.  If you look at the webs carefully, you will find small spiders riding on them. So, were the spiders just spinning and got blown away?  Nope. The spiders were doing it intentionally to get around, to spread their species. Just like other plants and animals.

ballooning-spiders_thumb

How far can they fly?  When Charles Darwin first observed them, the Beagle was 60 miles off the South American shore.  At that time, science was not advanced enough to figure out how they were flying except to assume that it was all due to the wind.  Recently, British scientists solved the mystery. It does not have anything to do with the wind. In fact, the spiders seem to prefer light wind or calm.  The Earth carries a negative charge. When the spiders spin their webs, the webs are also negative. And, as I am sure you know, two negatively charged objects repel each other.  So, when the spiders feel the Earth developing a strong negative charge, they begin to tingle. They begin to spin, and off they go. Whee!

Lee Huddleston  July 8, 2018