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.
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