Visitors for Our Final Weekend

For the final weekend of our boating holiday, we had our old friends Stillman and Ester and their two lovely girls for a visit. They were on their way back from Switzerland visiting Ester's family and stopped in Toronto for a few days before continuing on to Saskatchewan to meet up with Stillman's fam.

We were worried the two girls might get bored on the boat, but that did not happen - they found a hundred things to do to keep themselves occupied: swinging in the hammock, going for dinghy rides, exploring the hidden reaches of the boat, taking photographs, colouring, and even helping out a lot with the cooking and dishes.

I met Stillman in university and he's one of the very few people I've kept in touch with over the years, but we haven't seen each other for at least seven or eight years so it was a long overdue visit. They had recently moved back to Florida from Washington, D.C. and lived conveniently right on the Intercoastal Waterway so we expect to see them again very soon.

We spent one night on the boat in the marina then sailed over to Hamilton Harbour and spent the second night anchored out. We toured them around our favourite spots on Lower James Street (including Grandad's Doughnuts, of course) then had a great night just hanging out in the cockpit catching up.

After an amazing brunch back in Stoney Creek at the Innsville Restaurant, we parted ways. Stillman and the family left for their airport hotel and we drove back home to hang out with Stella for the rest of the day.

I usually do a big calculation at the end of these trips to tally how many miles we traveled, but this year I don't need to as we barely went anywhere! But that was our plan and I must say I had a most enjoyable vacation and felt like I'd been away from work for months. Which reminds me, we will soon actually be away from work for months, but that will be the subject of the next post....

July 21, 2024 - Blow Job on the Boat

I used to get sick a lot. In my twenties I traveled through and worked in a number of developing countries, regularly throwing caution to the wind. I did a trip on the Karakoram highway that runs through the mountainous frontier between Pakistan and China where landslide rocks regularly flew by our car as we passed through narrow and shaky roads just inches away from thousand meter drops. In that same country I visited the Peshawar region's illicit market (in disguise) where you could buy machine guns, rocket launchers, and kilogram bricks of hashish. In Central America, Ana and I traveled through some very sketchy places, getting robbed several times, once at knifepoint. As exciting as all this was, I also liked to try all the food in these countries, from street vendors, restaurants, peoples' homes, and markets. And frequently I'd eat something dodgy and get violently ill, blowing it out both ends, losing weight, and even getting myself hospitalized for the better part of a week with severe food poisoning. Now, don't feel sorry for me because this was completely self-induced and I could have easily played it safe. But where's the adventure in that? Anyway, my stomach developed into a nuclear reactor containment building and I was able to eat anything no matter how dodgy it looked or smelled.

Over the years my opportunities to eat suspicious foods has diminished, so now I am limited to eating yogurt long past its best-before date and milk that's just on the edge of turning into cottage cheese. Plus I've been known to assemble my lunch from perfectly good leftovers foolishly tossed into the kitchen garbage can by my less utilitarian family members.

Because of all this, I like to challenge my system sometimes, just to make sure I haven't turned completely into a wimp. So after returning to the boat on Thursday after a few days at home, I went for a paddleboard ride with my buddy Sharon then had a nice swim at the beach. What's the problem with that, you may ask. Well, after the torrential rain showers this week, the lake has been polluted with all sorts of nastiness from the runoff from creeks and overflowing storm sewers, creating a supposedly hazardous situation with the thriving E. Coli counts in the water, and all the beaches were closed and swimming was verboden. I did have a look in the water before diving in and didn't see any clumps of creatures looking up at me so I just enjoyed my swim and even gargled a bit of water to give my stomach a sample of challenging liquid.

Back at the boat I upped the ante. We've been having a little trouble with foul smells in one of the heads on the boat and I suspected a blocked air vent - this is the line that runs from the septic holding tank to the side of the boat where it is supposed to let the bad air out and fresh air in. I first shot water down the vent from the outside of the boat but it didn't seem to be going through so I leaned over, wrapped my mouth around the vent, and blew as hard as I could to see if I could force air into the tank. Well, I certainly built up a lot of pressure in that hose, but instead of the air going in, I got a lungfull and a half of putrid sewage vapour and particles. It tasted pretty bad and I could feel my stomach doing a few circles. I shot some more water in there, then did another huge mouth blow, with the same result. Just to be sure I hadn't poisoned myself (as I am slightly more cautious at this age) I went down into the cabin and grabbed a Scotch Mint. That ought to do the trick.

Next day, I woke up feeling delightful with no measurable after-effects, besides a bit of morning sewer breath, but that's normal for me.

July 15, 2024 – From Beautiful to Rainstorms then Back to Beautiful

For back to work Monday, we decided to sail home for a couple of days to get some things done, then we would return to the boat for the remainder of our vacation.

I wrote for a long while in the early morning to the sounds of the rowers training in the bay on a perfect summer day. These guys were incredible – there were six racing boats, one lean and muscled young man in each, and they sprinted back and forth, rowing fast and precise, causing hardly a noise as their boats sliced through the waters. Ana came out to join me, but by the then the rowers had finished, so she instead took some lovely photos of showoff birds sitting on our lifelines.

We left the club and began motoring across the lake with the wind directly in our face. I checked the weather and saw that a huge system of thunderstorms had developed and were speeding towards the lake so we decided to play it safe and pulled into the Etobicoke Yacht Club, west of Toronto. This is another top class, fancy yacht club, but it was very quiet. The rain soon came and the downpour was torrential, and we found out later that many city streets and buildings had been flooded, including Magnus’s college where the roof fell in on several classes and they closed the building until further notice. Strangely, there was little wind and not a lot of lightning, so we could have probably made it safely to Newport through it, but we were in no big rush and didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances. We worked on some boat jobs as the rain poured down, but it started to break around 3:30 so we put on our rain gear and went for a walk around the local area but there was very little of interest.

By 5pm the skies had turned blue and we continued along motoring towards Newport, now with zero wind and a completely flat lake. We had a lovely ride back and were happy we had waited out the storm.

We made it back to Newport by 8:45, got the boat cleaned up and all of our stuff loaded into the van and by 10:30 were back home.

 

July 14 – Lake Swim, The Beaches, and the Worst Job in Sailboating

I started the day with some journal writing then a long paddleboard ride and swim in the channel. By the time I returned, Ana was ready to go so we tossed off the lines and motored to our next destination on the trip – Ashbridges Bay Yacht Club, which is just east of Toronto in an area called The Beaches. Ana checked the beach report and the recent rain had caused high levels of E. Coli so swimming was not recommended. Fortunately, with a boat you can stop in the middle of the lake and have yourself a nice swim out where the E. Coli are scarce, which is exactly what we did. It was gloriously refreshing with a water temperature of 27 degrees, which is the warmest we have ever seen this lake.

Our arrival was a little strange. Usually when a boat is coming in to dock, everybody in the vicinity leaps up and comes to catch lines and help them in. Docking can be exceptionally difficult and is where most accidents and injuries occur. We were assigned a slip that wasn’t quite big enough for our boat, so it was a little tricky and none of the people sitting in the cockpits of their sailboats nearby bothered to get up and give us a hand. Only after we got safely tied up and were walking up the dock to the clubhouse to check in did we figure out why – this club looked to be almost exclusively sailboats. Why does that matter? Well, in our experience sailboaters tend to be a little cool and prickly, especially when gathered in groups discussing such important matters as self-tailing winch speeds, anchor types, tell tales, sail shape, and the relative advantages of circular versus straight cotter pins for securing turnbuckles. This is why we tend to hang out with powerboaters. They are helpful, more fun, less weird, and it brings great joy to your heart when you accompany them to the fuel dock and watch them put in a thousand bucks worth of fuel to your sixty.

There was a huge event going on at the club with hundreds of young sailors there for a wind up event after two days of racing. We checked the weather and a menacing layer of thunderstorms were rolling in, so after spending a while in the cockpit of the boat being hammered by rain, we ran back into the clubhouse to watch the second half of the Euro Cup final between England and Spain. Neither of us care much for either of these teams so we just enjoyed watching some fine soccer in the company of uncharacteristically rowdy sailboaters with painted faces.

The skies cleared and we took a long walk down the boulevard of Woodbine beach with its 96 beach volleyball courts and thousands of people from hundreds of countries speaking dozens of languages. We walked up to Queen Street, admiring the lovely residential houses (you can get a small one for just under three million if you deal hard) then picked up a few groceries and had a slow walk back along the beach, stopping a couple of times to sit on a bench and soak up the scenes.

Because we hadn’t done any boat jobs for the day, Ana heroically found one for us – cleaning the composting toilet. This is a disgusting job, especially this time when the solids bucket had been somehow infiltrated with pee, creating a slimy stew of feces, coconut coir, bacteria, and god knows what else. I normally do this job on my own, at night, when nobody can see what I’m up to, but we made royal ass guests of ourselves and did it right on the dock of the lovely yacht club. It was late Sunday however, so nearly everybody had left their boats, so we didn’t cause too much of a spectacle with the garbage bags, rubber gloves, high pressure spraying, detergents, and intermittent swearing.

With a freshly cleaned toilet and new coconut coir loaded, we cleaned our fingernails then enjoyed delicious chicken burritos that Ana whipped together and may have been the most delicious I have ever eaten.

July 13 – Art Festival, Rubber Boots, and Queuing up for the Islands

Until now, I hadn’t done any writing on this trip - the days had been too full with activity, so this morning I was up early and sat in the cockpit with my laptop piecing together the previous days’ events. I had considered not writing about this one (as I have done on previous trips) but once I get going it comes fast and feeds my compulsion to document, to record, to create, to write.

The sun had returned with a vengeance and it was going to be upwards of 30 degrees today. We took the tender into the city and walked up to Nathan Phillips Square where the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair was in full swing. We visited every artist stall and saw some incredible art pieces, everything from paintings of fruit bowls to elaborate sculpture, blown glass, silk prints, and abstractions of all varieties. But for me, the most powerful art statement came when I passed a dude on the street in rubber  boots wearing a shirt that read, “I hate rubber boots”. Big cities = interesting people doing weird things.

We had an ice cream then wandered the city for a while. We passed a clothing store called Brandy Melville that must have had a hundred girls queued up in a line outside waiting to get in, and they all looked just like Stella and her friends. Another huge queue formed by the Pirate Taxis headed out to the islands, but this one was packed with outrageously dressed gay dudes, undoubtedly headed for Hanlon’s Beach, the nude and primarily gay beach on the islands where you can let your eggs hang free and your willy swing in the wind.

Ana and I returned to the boat for a little chill out session, then hit the pool for a cool down, then took a long and slow dinghy ride through the islands under the protection of our wide-brimmed hats. We passed by one of the ferry terminals and I was shocked to see literally a thousand people or more rammed into these cattle herding stations waiting to catch a ferry back to the mainland. This is why you visit the islands during the week.

After a late dinner on the boat we settled into the cockpit to plan out the next few days, but I wasn’t much help as I fell asleep instantly.

July 12 – Island Lounging, Baby Peacocks, and a Dinner with Team Olson

“Well, it’s my last day in Toronto Dad, I wonder what I should do?” said Stella, shortly after her awakening ceremonies had been completed. Her and her brother would be staying at his place tonight then taking an early train back home the next morning.

“Options are unlimited here,” I said. “What would you like to do?”

“Maybe I should find a yoga class.”

“Come help me with the boat projects this morning and I’ll teach you boat yoga – it’s way more effective than a class,” I said as I stretched down into a Warrior Two position with wire strippers in my hand.

“Uh, well maybe I’ll see if I can find a cooking class instead.”

“Easy, why don’t you help us make lunch and supper – you’ll learn far more making boat meals than listening to those Toronto chef-phonies,” I said as I double flipped a spatula and spun a tomato on the tip of my finger.

“I’m going to see if Mom has any ideas.”

Today was the first day in a very long time that I hadn’t woken up to thoughts of boat maintenance. We’d done some significant boat improvement projects this year and I realized this has weighed heavily on me as they had been outside of my comfort level and produced a fair bit of anxiety. Putting the wraps on the solar wiring was a major milestone and I was able to test my completed solar power setup today to excellent results.

We left National shortly after 11am and motored the short distance across the Inner Harbour to Island Yacht Club, another of our favourites on the lake. We checked in with the dockmaster and tried to pay but were told we had paid already. We weren’t sure how that was possible as we they did not have an online payment option, but maybe they had our credit card on file from previous visits. We didn’t see any charges on our card but weren’t going to argue with her as she insisted we were all set.

It was a beautiful, hot day with not a cloud in sight so our second order of business after first tracking down the resident peacocks with their two freshly born peacock babies, was to settle down at the club’s pool. It was glorious. I was one of two men there and the rest were the “ladies who lunch” or, in this case, marinate in the pool all day with fancy cocktails mixed up by the poolside bartender. I imagined all their husbands at work making business calls, doing deals, liquidating assets, investing in projects, and developing sweat stains in the armpits of their high end collared shirts while I was here nodding off in a lounge chair soaking up the sun. Life is good.

We wandered back to the boat around 4pm and I sat on the back of SeaLight for a beer and a Cuban cigar watching the swans floating around in the bay as reggaeton played on the stereo. The girls were downstairs in the AC and I just sat there by myself thinking of little, doing little, and relishing in the luxury of an empty mind.

At 4:30, right on cue to ruin the start of the weekend for the workers, the black clouds rolled in out of nowhere and it started to rain. And it rained hard. This has been a common occurrence this summer with rain appearing regularly on Friday evenings, Saturdays, and Sunday which is the ultimate piss-off after a series of beautiful weekdays.

Ana, Stella and I donned our rainsuits and took the free courtesy tender into the city as we were taking the kids out for dinner on our last night together. We took the long walk east across downtown back to the St. Lawrence Market area and got a table at the Hothouse restaurant, a place we’ve never visited but the menu looked great. Magnus arrived shortly after we were seated and we were served four incredible meals, which we ate slowly as we talked and laughed.

I took a mental photo of us in that restaurant which I will store away as a moment I felt exceptionally proud of my family. We still feel like a team despite the kids now breaking out on their own and Ana and I moving into a different phase of our lives. I relished this moment as I know they will become less frequent in the coming years, which means we just need to appreciate them more when they happen.

After getting swarmed on a street corner by a bridal party mob of Toronto ladies in short red skirts looking for some Friday evening party action, we grabbed Ana a coffee from Timmy’s, said goodbye to the kids, then had a long, slow walk back to the pickup location where we caught the last boat to the island.

We were back to a team of two and the weekend had arrived in the big city.

July 11, 2024 - Island Tour and Drone Show

Today was Dad’s last day here so after the mandatory boat work (fixed the starter battery charging system and changed the engine belt), Stella, Dad and I took the dinghy out to explore the Toronto Islands. I expect that most Canadians who haven’t visited Toronto probably don’t know about the islands, but they are truly amazing. Ana took a pass on the trip as she had some work to catch up on for our yacht club. She started as the Director of Marketing and Volunteers at the end of last year and it has turned into a substantial role that requires a great deal of time, so most nights at home she is tapping away on the laptop long after I’ve gone to bed. It’s good to have overachievers on the Board!

We wound our way through the island at slow speed, enjoying the bird traffic, watching the people on shore, passing paddleboarders and kayakers, then stopped at Centre Island for a long walk. Midweek is the best time to visit as weekends on the islands are packed full of people. We walked along the pathways and trails, to the beach, then to the amusement park there where we found a young lad serving ice cream cones so we asked for three. They were the tiniest ice creams I’d ever seen, and Stella’s even had a big hole through what little ice cream was there, so I sent that one back for retooling. Five bucks doesn’t get you much of an ice cream on Centre Island.

My dad was really impressed with these islands just a stone’s throw from the biggest city in Canada. It’s not what you would expect and is just one of the surprises this incredible city has to offer.

We returned to the boat and Ana had finished her work and was ready to do something so her and Stella went out to pick up some groceries while Dad and I stayed back to prepare late lunch and do more damage to the red wine in a box.

Lunch was magnificent – grilled potato packs with mushrooms, peppers, onions, and fresh herbs then sirloin steaks, corn, and salad. We ate slowly, had wine, and enjoyed our final time together until it was time to go. Instead of taking a low class Uber or dirty public transit or walking in the heat, Dad and I jumped in the dinghy and within 7 minutes I had dropped him off on shore just a short walk from Union Station where he would catch a train to Pearson airport.

Which left three.

But not for long.

Daryl and Lydia came over for dinner and were happy to eat up the lunch leftovers. We also had a surprise – our buddy Sharon from Newport, who was hanging out in Toronto for the day while her husband Greg (of Greg’s Island fame) was working in Pickering. We had a jolly time in SeaLight’s cockpit, then later moved over to National’s cozy fire pit, where there was not just a roaring fire, but we also got to see a drone show taking place somewhere around Ontario Place, as did Stella, but from on the water as she had taken the dinghy out for a nighttime solo ride. There must have been a thousand drones in the sky to create the lighted spectacles we saw – words spelled out in the sky, images, patterns, faces, and everything moving in perfect synchronicity. I had never even heard of drone light shows, but I’ll be watching for them now.
Greg made a brief appearance then he and Sharon left for Newport, Daryl and Lydia returned to their boat at Alexandria, and we retired to SeaLight for the night.

July 10, 2024 - Downpour and Solar Wiring

Dad and I were up early and immediately went to work. Today was the day to finally finish up the solar wiring. Earlier in the year we had purchased and installed a dinghy arch in preparation for a big trip coming up this fall. The arch is a large and shiny aluminum contraption that bolts to the back of the boat and is useful for many things: hoisting a dinghy, mounting large solar panels, serving as a diving board, hanging ropes from, doing pull-ups, stringing hammocks, and other fabulous uses we are still yet to discover. I installed it over two weekends in May with my mechanically gifted friends Sina and Dave and it turned out beautifully, but I had yet to connect everything for the solar wiring as it had taken me a while to figure out exactly how to do it and to get the supplies and equipment I needed. Final wiring was today’s job, and what better time to do it than when I had an electrical genius on board.

The girls left to do some administration and shopping and Dad and I worked on it until noon. It involved taking all those solar cables we had fished through the boat the other day and connecting them to a backing board with the new solar controller then shoving the whole works into a small cabinet. The final result was impressive and I now have a three circuit solar system on the boat capable of producing a theoretical total of 1330 watts, but realistically probably around 1100. It was immensely satisfying seeing those little green LED lights on the solar controllers start to flash.

We celebrated this achievement by walking down to the Indian Roti House at the harbour front for a couple of extra spicy rotis. The weather today was atrocious as the remnants of hurricane Beryl was barreling through Toronto so we wore raincoats as we walked from the roti shop up to Dundas Square, but in this sort of downpour raincoats can only do so much. By the time we arrived, we were mostly soaked through and we looked like a couple of drowned out rodents standing in the lobby of the mall waiting for the ladies so we could go and see a movie. Magnus had finished his classes for the day so he met us too and we watched A Quite Place – Day One. It was okay. I liked the creatures and the jump scares, but the side stories were just too simple and felt forced. But there hasn’t been much of anything good coming out lately so it was the best we could do.

The rain had finally started to let up by the end of the movie so Dad, Magnus and I walked down to the Town Crier pub for fancy German and Belgian beers while the ladies continued on with their shopping adventures. We met back at the boat for a long and leisurely dinner then put the wraps on a soggy, but fun day in the big city.

July 9, 2024 – TV Interview, Oyster Shucking, Inflatable Couches, and a Midnight Dinghy Ride

It’s nice waking up in a fancy yacht club. Newport is a great yacht club, with amazing people, and I love waking up there too, but it’s not exactly fancy. Port Credit Yacht Club has fancy washrooms and showers, classy docks, fine dining, bartenders serving drinks, staff all over the place doing the members’ bidding, and that nice pool we were floating in yesterday. Despite that, we decided to push onto National Yacht Club in Toronto, which is a fancy yacht club too, just without the pool.

After a quick job and a half on the boat then showers and breakfast, we motored the short distance to National as there was no wind and the lake was flat. We gave SeaLight a little sponge and bucket bath along the way as she has picked up a bit of crud on deck. The day was already hot and heating up by the minute.

After getting docked we gathered our things and walked into the city. National is located on the western side of downtown, right across from Toronto’s Billy Bishop island airport so it within walking distance of anywhere you want to go in central Toronto, as long as you have the time and the stamina and don’t wimp out and take a streetcar or subway.

As we walked along we noticed a CP24 crew (local Toronto media channel) and the host interviewed Stella on the topic of how to keep cool in the sweltering heat. We didn’t hear much from her for the rest of the day as she was streaming CP24 on her phone waiting to see if her clip appeared but, sadly, it did not, so she learned that in the future she had to act more like a crazy person to get any sort of media exposure.

We walked all the way across town to St. Lawrence Market, and nearly made it before the girls found a consignment clothing store and went shopping. Dad and I were starving so we pushed on and found a nice young man shucking oysters in the market so we ordered up a plate and they were simply amazing. We followed up those slimers with a couple of pints of craft beer, then once the girls arrived we all grabbed lunch then ate together outside on one of the picnic tables and watched all the tourists and locals going to and fro on a fine Tuesday workday.

From there we pushed onto the Distillery District and found a giant stage with a three piece jazz band playing to a sea of inflated, multi-coloured rubber couches and only a handful of people. The girls went shopping so Dad and I got seated on our own couches and listened to the snappy jazz tunes under the hot sun until we both crashed out. The girls, of course, took a few glamour shots of us before they slapped us awake.

We returned to St Lawrence Market and went into Balzac Coffee where Magnus had just started his shift. He poured us up some cold brew coffees and drinks and we sat watching him work. He is very good at his job and kept up with the hectic pace and steady stream of customers, despite our heckling from the corner.

The prospect of walking all the way back to the boat under the punishing sun was a bit too much so we ordered an Uber and Dad got to experience the brutal Toronto rush hour traffic, which took nearly as long as it would have if we had walked.

Once back at the boat we all flew into action as we were making dinner for our friends Daryl and Lydia who were docked at the Alexandria Yacht Club, right beside National. It had been a rough few days for them as their baby had needed a surgery shortly after his birth and they’d been at the hospital non-stop. We met up at the club bbq area and had a big meal together and many glasses of wine and even got to see little Zachary through an online web camera focused right on his little beautiful face.

What better way to finish up a day in Toronto than taking a midnight dinghy ride around the islands. All four of us piled into our dinghy and head out then Daryl caught up later, moving at lightning speed solo in his dinghy. The glamorous Toronto skyline alight with colour is even more incredible from the water. After transferring Dad to Daryl’s dinghy we were both able to plane at high speed and we ripped across the inner harbour and out into the lake. We stopped at Ward’s beach to get some sand on our feet then jumped  back in and circumnavigated the islands then popped back into National to put the wraps on an excellent first day in Toronto.

July 8, 2024 – Boat Yoga, A Baby Arrives, and Searching for Wallets in Port Credit

Dad and I were up early and took the dinghy out to the beach for a morning swim, along with about a hundred Canada Geese who all just slowly shuffled a bit further down the beach when we approached. The water was delicious and helped to clear the cranium cobwebs that lingered from the night before.

After breakfast we found Chris, which is never hard as their house is right beside our boat slip. Chris wasn’t wearing his Animal the Muppet shirt today so wasn’t in a crazy mood and just back to his regular entertaining self. He gave Dad and I a lift to Princess Auto where we found a set of “security bits” which are these funny drill bits with holes in the middle that were what we needed to open up the anchor controller. After a bit of copper deglazing with wire brushes, testing, then boat yoga to reinstall, the anchor windless was back in action and ready for another ten years of uninterrupted service. The full job for today was fixing the AC venting which had ripped apart and required half a roll of duct tape, a lot of swearing, and the ritual sacrifice of some knuckle skin.

Mid-morning we received the news that our friends Lydia and Daryl had delivered their baby Zachary! There was widespread rejoicing in the marina and Chris’s wife Miriam screamed to every passing boat, “Lydia had her baby!” regardless of whether they knew Lydia or not, but all expressed great delight. We were so happy for them as they are such great friends and have been trying for many years to have a child and it finally happened.

After the girls delivered Magnus to the train station to make his way back to Toronto, we left harbour and motored to the first destination of our trip – the Port Credit Yacht Club, which took about three hours. I was hoping to sail but the wind was directly in our face and we wanted to get there in decent time to take advantage of their lovely pool. We had a nice ride over and Stella even fell asleep in the hammock which I had strung across the sailboat arch.

Port Credit is a beautiful club full of huge boats and members with plump bank accounts. Because Newport too is a yacht club it gives us access and reciprocal privileges to most of the other yacht clubs on the lake, on both the Canadian and US sides, which is an incredible benefit. We had a long, leisurely session at the pool then returned to the boat to get dressed for a walk into the main commercial area of Port Credit, which was about a 40 minutes away. As she was getting ready, Stella asked if anybody had seen her keys and wallet. With the help of the air tags attached to it she discovered that she had left it at the Walmart in Burlington the day before, so her and Ana called up an Uber and took off in the hopes of retrieving it.

Dad and I walked along the waterfront trail, enjoying the serene forest paths, lake views, and marveled at some of the neighbourhood homes we passed. We stopped to admire a waterfront building lot for sale.

“How much do you think it costs?” I asked him.

“I’m going to say one million.”

“No way, it’s probably closer to three.”

Well, thanks to the smart phone we had our answer in seconds. Eight million. But it looked like they threw in a house for free with the lot. That one was a little out of our budget so we kept walking.

I walked Dad around lively Port Credit and Snug Harbour then we found a cool looking restaurant called Nomad’s Restobar and plunked ourselves down on the patio and ordered a bucket of Corona and the guacamole dip. I haven’t ordered a bucket of beer for about twenty years, but Dad’s been traveling down to the US in an RV the past couple of winters and is a regular beer bucket consumer so I just took followed his lead. The patio was great and we had a long chat on all sorts of topics as we enjoyed the reggae tunes. But as darkness fell, so did the quality of the music and we were hit with a barrage of terrible Drake songs and even worse Beiber ones. Dad simply turned down his fancy new hearing aids and I just had to talk a bit louder.

Between the Ubers and the Go train and walking, and tracking down the right person at Walmart to talk to, it took them a very long time to return, but fortunately they were able to track down Stella’s stuff and everything was intact, including the cash, so that disaster was averted and she probably learned a valuable lesson.

We took an Uber back to the club then sat down in the Adirondack chairs which circled the most amazing gas-fueled firepit. We stayed there for a while talking and watching the raccoons and foxes roaming the grounds until we got tired and called it a night.

July 7, 2024 - Weekend at Newport

Instead of blowing out of the harbour on Friday evening as fast as possible, we spent the first weekend of our vacation at our home marina Newport with all of our buddies. I took Dad for a 1am dinghy ride on the lake, which was glassy calm and moonlit by the crescent. It is always surreal being on the lake at that time, when you are the only boat, the shoreline is alive with colourful lights, and the water is black. Dad loved it, and he also loved our new dinghy which is like a Cadillac compared to our old one.

Saturday morning arrived quickly, and it was bright and calm so I took Dad for an early morning swim and superficial lake bath at the small beach just outside of our harbour entrance. In this part of the lake, the water temperature can swing dramatically from week to week. If the currents and winds are just right, it pulls up the frigid water from the bottom of the lake and replaces all the warm stuff. The temperature was a bit cooler than the weekend before, but not too bad, so we stayed for a good long while.

After breakfast, I introduced Dad to one fundamental law of boat life, or at least life on SeaLight. We’re not allowed to have any fun for the day until we’ve done at least 1.5 jobs. There is never a shortage of work on a boat, as new issues appear faster than one can repair existing ones. Today’s job was to fish cables from our new solar panels into the main salon, which was really only half a job as we had already got a start on it the weekend before. The full job was to fish a speed and temperature transducer cable from nearly the front of the boat back to the electronic gauges in the cockpit. The nice thing about the half job rule is the next day you can get right at it and don’t have to waste time figuring out which of the dozens of outstanding jobs to work on.

These jobs took us until mid-afternoon and knuckle blood was drawn on at least four separate occasions, but we got it done; the new transducer worked perfectly and the solar wires were ready for connecting to the new solar controllers…but that would be a job for a different day. I also introduced Dad to “boat yoga”, which is the ultimate in practical flexibility training as you need to contort your body into unimaginable positions when doing jobs in small boat spaces that were designed for servicing by Oompa Loompas.

We went back out to the beach for drinks and a swim with a few dock buddies then went up to the club house for a potluck supper with forty other Newporters. The  meal was incredible and, as usual, our marina posse really outdid themselves with the potluck contributions. After the cleanup and trivia competition (which our table won with 17 correct answers out of 20, mostly thanks to Stella and her fresh knowledge of biology, space, and science) we lingered for a long time with our box of wine chatting with friends, then may have had a nightcap in the cockpit before retiring.

Sunday Funday means going for an early morning paddleboard and swim then busting ass on jobs for the day. The anchor windless had stopped working the weekend before, so we ripped the v-berth apart and I boat yoga’d into position to start testing wires and controllers with Dad retrieving and handing over the required tools like a surgeon’s assistant. We extracted the throbbing heart of the system and tried to open it up but didn’t have the required bits, so we put that job on ice until we could find what we needed. The half job for the day was figuring out where to mount the solar controllers, and Dad came up with a far better location than I was originally thinking.

Our friends Greg and Sharon own their own island in Lake Ontario so we spent the afternoon there, along with about half of the entire membership of the club. It’s a beautiful island and is normally stored in the trunk of their vehicle, but once you inflate that baby, wow – we’re talking cup holders/marine ashtrays, seatbacks, a slippery seal/walrus entrance ramp, a beer-chilling chamber (which was actually warmer than the lake because when people peed in their seats, it would run down into there), and a three metre high diving board. People were really in the mood for shenanigans so after some heavy drinking things got really fun. With four boats rafted up together bouncing around in the waves and the island tethered behind them by a rope, there was plenty of opportunity for falls and wipeouts. Sharon slipped getting on the island, did some kind of barrel roll, then fell into the arms of Chris, which could have been a magical Hallmark moment, but it was way too sloppy for that. Not wanting to be outdone, Chris got himself a drink refill from the boat then tripped on the island, slid across the seats, then fell face first into the beer cooling chamber/pee collection point, which also served as a foot marinating station. I think he might have bit somebody’s toe when he was in there, but he eventually launched out of the chamber looking half drowned and delirious and wearing this awesome Animal the Muppet tshirt, which I think is what put him in the crazy mood in the first place. But Carl had the best entrance of all. He is not a drinker and is a pretty big dude, so when he did a Super Mario jump off the back of the boat onto the island, it double-bounced three of us straight up in the air. I did a neat backflip and landed easily back in my spot, but the other two got bounced out into the lake, near the shore. Carl then rocketed forward, roundhouse kicked Greg in the side of the face and shoulder checked my dad, sending his beer flying through the air. He then landed artfully right in the chair he was going for, then smiled and waited for a round of applause, which he received after we’d revived Greg.

Besides the action on Greg Island, there was plenty of other stuff going on. A couple other Newport boats were anchored nearby and they were dancing on the boat and falling over the side regularly. Somebody brought their Sea Doo and came screaming by Greg Island at full speed and barely managed to not decapitate anybody. Magnus was towing his sister and her friend around behind the paddleboard as they floated in rapidly leaking Dollar Store floaties. I sat back in my chair, sipped my beer, splashed some refreshing lake water on my face, and watched the action unfoldoing around us and was reminded of one thing: how much I hate winter.

Back at Newport we gathered at the parkette for the traditional Sunday Boat Family Dinner. It was more entertaining than usual as several people were bandaged up or limping from injuries sustained from the afternoon hijinks on the island, which was now planted on the grass drying out, unhappily awaiting its repatriation to Greg and Sharon’s vehicle. The dinner was especially rewarding for Ana and I as we often have to leave earlier on Sundays, but not today baby, as our boat vacation had already started and office work was not on the itinerary.

July 4, 2024 – The 2024 Sailing Trip Begins

This year’s trip was going to be a little different. We typically take two weeks of vacation in July and push our sailboat as far as we can possibly go within that time. We usually start the trip planning by thinking, This year, let’s take it a bit easy and have a more relaxed pace. This never happens. There are usually multiple overnight runs, many 4am starts, and a lot of long, long sailing days, which are usually by motor power as the wind seems to always be either right in our face or nonexistent.

But this year it was different. The initial plan was for my nephew William to join us for a week of the sailing trip and limit the destination to marinas in and around Toronto. He has attended sailing camps during the last couple of summers and has really enjoyed it so when we visited my brother Marty and family in Ottawa for New Year’s, William and I made a blood pact that he would join us this summer. After cutting deeply into our palms with the turkey knife and clasping hands in an iron grip then winding the knuckled, bloody mass with ceremonial nautical manila rope and staring into each other’s eyes, the deal was done and irrevocable.

Once my dad caught wind of our pact he called and asked if he could join us, which of course he was welcome to do, as he suffers from severe FOMO and we do all we can to bring him in on the adventures, especially when we can put him to work on stuff. Now, once my Saskatoon-based nephew Eliot caught wind of the revised plan he floated the idea of joining, which of course he was welcome to do, as he has only the beginnings of a FOMO affliction, but was more interested in hanging out with his crazy cousin and trying out some Lake Ontario pirating.

Now, I had to consider some trip rules. Both the nephews are the same age and undoubtedly in the cruel grips of puberty where their brains aren’t working properly and other weird shit starts to happen. After some deliberation, I decided the boys needed only two rules:

1.    Wear your lifejacket
2.    No whacking off in the boat

I forwarded the rules onto my brothers, who wrestled agreement out of their sons and reported back that the terms had been reluctantly accepted.

Everything was set and we all anxiously awaited the start of the trip. Then the whole damn thing fell apart a week before departure. Why? Well, William has always been a bit of a rascal and this year’s rascalling led to something more serious than usual. Details from my brother were fuzzy, but it seems the Quebec language police raided William's English-only lemonade stand and a massive firefight ensued. Injuries were sustained on both sides and there was not a clear victor, but it did end up with William getting entangled in some lengthy court proceedings and a stint in solitary confinement with Mitsou videos and French soap operas on infinite repeat for a dose of Quebec-style language reprogramming. These punishments were set to last for the foreseeable future.

When Eliot heard the news he was given a choice by his folks: continue with the trip and hang out with grandpa and his aunt and uncle for a week, or stay home. His decision was solidarity with the cousin and he declined the trip to make time for writing letters of support to the young jailbird. As much as we were going to miss the opportunity to spend time with him, it was the right decision, but I do hope William sorts out his legal issues and we get another shot at this trip sometime.

Fortunately, my dad decided to soldier on and join us. And that’s where the trip begins.