2025 Boat Trip Day 5 - A Peaceful, Easy Day

National Yacht Club to Island Yacht Club, Toronto Islands - 2 nautical miles sailed, 3 kilometres walked

It was a peaceful, easy day. 

After a boat cleanup and a walk to the grocery store to pick up a few things, we followed Lydia and Daryl to the Island Yacht Club, a mere two miles away across the bay. We lounged at the pool, I had a little nap in the sun on their comfy outdoor couches, we watched little Zachary swim with the help of his inflatable pool assist, and we chatted. The temperature had kicked up a few degrees and it was a glorious and sunny day, perfect for a lazy day on the islands.

We enjoyed a collaborative dinner with the Lydia/Daryl Collective in SeaLight's cockpit and sat for several hours playing with and feeding Zach, snuggling with Willy the Wiener Dog, and really not doing much of anything else.

It was a peaceful, easy day.

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 27, 2023 – I Want To See Your Peacock, Cock, Cock, Your Peacock, Cock

I wake up at a gloriously late 6:30, happy that we don’t have to travel anywhere for a few days. It is a clear, warm morning and I get set up in the cockpit with a hot chicory drink and my laptop and do some writing.

Spending so much time on the boat really tunes your ears to the sounds the boat should and should not be making. The hum of the engine while underway should be just so – if it wavers, then something is going wrong, or about to go wrong. The sound of the wind on the sails (not that we’ve heard much of that this trip…) changes with different points of sail and you can hear when you are getting at too close of an angle to the wind. The air conditioner produces a symphony of sounds and it becomes easy to tell when it’s sucked up a wad of lily pads and is about to choke.

The one sound I notice this morning is the bilge pump. Or rather, no sound of it. It should be running periodically to drain the water created by the air conditioner. But this morning it is not so I open up the bilge to investigate. Sure enough, it is underwater and not working. I wiggle it. I flip the breaker on and off. I check the wiring and the voltage. I clean the impeller. Everything looks fine but it just does not work properly. I can get it to run if I turn it upside down, but when I flip it back over it sucks for a second then stops.

Time to go bilge pump shopping.

Daryl is up for the ride to the Dock Shoppe as he never passes up an opportunity to blow some coin at a marine store. But before leaving, our friends Chris and Miriam from Newport arrive in their 37’ Marinette aluminum cruiser powerboat and we help them to get docked. They’ve been cruising around for a week or so and decided to come and join us for the weekend. Their condo is right next to where our boat is docked at Newport and they can look down on us from their deck. I sometimes see Miriam peeking down at me through the bathroom window when I’m taking a shower and she’s usually giggling. I suspect I know what she’s giggling about, but I usually just wave then slowly draw the curtain.

Daryl and I jump in the dinghy and motor out of the islands and across the frantic, wavy Toronto Inner Harbour to the marine store which is located on a small barge at the end of an industrial jetty on the easternmost side. Unless you are a boater in need of parts, you would never, ever be able to find this place, nor just happen to pass by it. It is also past a prehistoric lift bride, which happens to be going up as we enter to let through a tug pushing a barge, who is coming up on us fast.

We pick up the parts we need then motor back to the boat but take the winding island route this time which is a bit slower, but scenic and calm. After installing the new bilge pump and discovering it is behaving exactly the same as the old one, I give up and take the dinghy back across the bay to pick up our friends Angela and Sheila from Brantford, who are coming out to join us for a day. I find them waving at me from beside the Empire Sandy schooner so they load into the dinghy and we cruise back to the boat for a burger lunch then an extended chill out session at the pool.

As we’re walking back to the boat we bump into our friends and learn they have been scavenging (and perhaps plucking?) feathers all afternoon from the pimped out male peacock. Miriam has a handful of four foot long feathers, that she’s strutting around like Mrs. Thurston Howell the Third. Lydia has one between her teeth and sashays like a matador down the dock. Daryl has one pinned in his dapper hat, complementing his million dollar smile. Chris has one slid into the belt buckle loop of his shorts, inviting pelvic glances just like Robert Plant did with that red rose in his low cut jeans when Led Zeppelin played Stairway to Heaven, but Chris’s version is way sexier. I haven’t seen the daddy peacock today but I expect he now looks like he’s got the mange, patchy and unkempt, with half of his feathers missing. After seeing this bonanza of colour, Angela decides she needs a feather as a fashion accessory for an upcoming event so Ana finds two dock rats and sends them off plucking.

After a dinghy ride through the islands, the four of us enjoy a slow and relaxed dinner and drinks at the yacht club restaurant like the fancy folks that we are, then we all meet up in the air conditioned inner digestive system of SeaLight, otherwise known as the main salon. We usually gather in the cockpit, but tonight we try something new. I pull up Spotify on my phone and start with the most appropriate song I could think of as we reflected on today’s events, a new one from Katy Perry, and I turn it to maximum volume:

I want to see your peacock, cock, cock, your peacock, cock. Your peacock, cock, cock, your peacock.

I want to see your peacock, cock, cock, your peacock, cock. Your peacock, cock, cock, your peacock.

Well that really gets the party going. People start jumping around, arms pumping, hips gyrating, going crazy to the beat. A couple of the ladies whip their shirts off, then one of them rips off Daryl’s shorts and, adding fuel to this techno fire, we are rewarded with a beautiful peacock feather peeking out of his boxers which really drives the chicks mental.

I notice the huge bottle of Kraken that Marty and I tried to kill back in Kingston still has a bit left so I split it into two cups, four ounces each, keeping one for myself and giving one to Chris as I don’t think he’s ever experienced a Kraken smackdown, but I think he’s going to really like it.

The party is really heating up as my playlist winds through other high octane fowl tunes and there are more clothes being tossed around, but then Daryl asks me about the electrical problem on the boat and the three men start discussing battery terminals, short circuits, breakers, then we start taking the boat apart and testing stuff, which just kills the mood. Someone mentions mapping out the electrical schematic and that instantly drives Sheila and Angela to bed and they don’t even bother gathering up their clothes so I guess I’ll have to sweep up all the bras, garter belts, and stockings later and return them to their respective owners.

The remaining partygoers move over to Chris and Miriam’s boat where the conversation focuses on the burgee (this is a flag for recreation boating clubs) we need to create for the LOL – Lake Ontario Loopers, which will be awarded to anybody from the club who does a similar circumnavigation of the full lake. We’re thinking it should have images of a gas can spilling fuel onto a goby fish and a swan, the earth on fire, definitely a peacock, and maybe an extra long wiener dog wrapping around the whole thing.

Man, that Kraken produces some good ideas!