2013 Lake Erie Sailing Trip - Day 9

Day 9 – Vermillion

We awoke to a boat basin which must have been cleaned up overnight by an army of volunteers, as the only remnants of the previous night's party were a few dozen floating beer cans and cups and a whole lot of boats which were eerily silent.  I also suspect that the hordes of hormone filled, skinny, ambitious 17 year olds just may have left some pockets of misfired seed scattered on the grass throughout the long evening, so I was careful to watch where I stepped when Magnus and I went for a morning walk to try and find abandoned carnival prizes.  The most common prize were these stuffed bananas that had dreadlocks and Rastafarian hats and since I wouldn’t let him waste any money on the games, he negotiated me into joining him for a scavenger hunt.  He actually did find one, but I checked it thoroughly for foreign substances before letting him have it.

We took off early headed for Vermillion which is, without a doubt, the nicest town on Lake Erie.  The wind was directly in our face so we motored the whole way and made it in less than two hours.  Vermillion is the only port on Lake Erie which has built lagoons and has hundreds of canal front houses, which you pass by while coming in the harbour.

We wanted to get into the Vermillion Boat Club marina as it is located right downtown and the only one with a pool, but we motored by it and didn’t see a single empty slip.  We circled back one more time to see if we somehow we missed one, and one of the sailboat members flagged us over and told us we could have his slip if we could wait ten minutes, as he was on his way out for the weekend.  When he left we grabbed his slip, got registered, then went for a walk around town.  There happened to be a Corvette show in town so while Ana and Magnus went to dig around in the consignment store, Stella and I checked out the cool cars.  There were some fine specimens there, to be sure, but I wonder who is buying Corvettes these days?  Every time I see one, it’s being driven by sixty plus, grey hair dude, and you just know that he has wanted a Corvette since he was old enough to drive, but couldn’t afford one until about four decades later.  Hey, at least he finally realize his dream, but it’s just too damn bad that you can’t live in reverse and have those slick wheels when you can really use them to impress your buddies and pull chicks.  By the time you’re sixty, you don’t really care about impressing anybody anymore and you’re either happily married or been divorced so many times it doesn’t really matter anymore.

After the car show, we went to the farmers market which, surprisingly, had hardly any food and was instead full of knick-knack vendors, so we walked to the supermarket instead and did a grocery run.  By this time the pool was calling so we returned to the marina and went poolside for a couple hours, soaking up the hot rays.

After grilling up and enjoying a delicious pork roast on the club grills, we walked down to the beach to experience a famous Vermillion sunset.  You see, as far as I can tell Vermillion is located exactly between where the sun sets and Detroit and you know that the most beautiful sunsets in the world are found where pollution is the most terrible.  We weren’t alone, there must have been fifty other people there to enjoy a sundowner.  While waiting, we all skipped rocks, looked for driftwood, had rock throwing contests and searched for sea shells.  When the sunset came, it was just as nice as expected.

We head back to the marina and the kids did some fire fly catching along the way, proving that Ohio must be the firefly capital of the world.  We settled in around the campfire with some of the local boaters and had a lovely time, enjoying some good, old fashioned American hospitality.