Highway Hot Dogs in Athens, Pupusas in Hudson, and the Wokest Street in America

Coxsackie to Hudson to Athens – 7 nautical miles and 14,000 steps

The hurricane season has been heating up and causing all sorts of chaos in the Caribbean and US. Everyone had been laughing at the weather forecasters who predicted a brutal hurricane season this year, but only a few storms had occurred. The end of September brought a little more action and now it seems there’s a new one brewing every few days. We are well outside of the regularly affected range of hurricanes but are sticking to a slower pace as we’ve heard a lot of boats are backing up in New York City waiting for these hurricanes to pass before they continue south. We are okay taking it slow for now as we are really enjoying exploring these new towns, getting used to the tides and currents, hanging out with our new friends, making great meals, daily cocktail hour, and taking advantage of all the free or cheap docks we’ve been able to find. The free options are going to dry up the closer to NYC, then after that it will be all anchoring, which is sure to bring its own challenges.

 

We left Coxsackie around 9:30 on an outgoing tide and most of the seven miles were spent dodging massive freighters and barges moving up and down the Hudson. Everybody here communicates on channel 13 and I’ve found the vessel captains to be extremely helpful on the radio in planning out how to manage the channel and keep out of their way. We reached Hudson but the free public docks there were far too small for our boats so instead we continued across the river to the much smaller town of Athens where we found, once again, magnificent and free public docks. These ones had large “NO OVERNIGHT DOCKAGE” signs, but everything we read online said this was not enforced so we tied up SeaLight then caught Kate and Ben’s lines when they arrived.

 

Athens is a cute little town, but once again we didn’t find much open, and the whole place was eerily deserted, looking almost like a movie set shortly before the zombies start piling up and eating everybody’s brains. It didn’t help when we came across a rusted out Hearse parked behind a derelict house and in the back window of the Hearse was a paper cut out of Joe Biden. I did get a little excited when we found a flag outside a brewery with the lettering DEEP FRIED BEERS, but the damn place was closed so I didn’t get to try a deep fried beer. I might go back tomorrow.

At 11:30 a loud siren went off and lasted for 4 excruciating minutes. I started salivating like a Pavlovian dog, trained at one of the previous towns which had a noon siren, signifying lunch. We’ve noticed most of these small American towns have sirens – another one had two per day – the noon one, but also one at 5pm which meant go home. There was one in a different town that went off very early so I guess that one meant wake up. But at siren at 11:30 didn’t make any sense. So we went to the Town Hall to find the mayor and get some answers.

 

The mayor hadn’t turned up for work but we did find a clerk who told us their sirens were used to call in the volunteer fire force for emergencies like cats in trees or gas plant explosions.

“But when the siren went off nobody came running out of houses,” Ana said.

 

“Well, they are supposed to come,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Wait, what time is it? Is it noon? They were probably going to the bakery first. It opens at noon.”

 

Bakery? We left immediately to investigate this new development.

 

As we walked back down the main street we saw a queue forming on the sidewalk and Kate got really excited – the most excited I’ve seen her yet. You see, Kate is English, and the English love nothing better than a good queue. It doesn’t even matter what they’re lining up for. If there’s a queue, there must be something at the end worth waiting for. We reached the queue and it was indeed the bakery with at least six people (presumed firefighters) waiting to buy bread. We didn’t need any bread and it took the strength of all three of us to pull Kate away from the queue as she was grasping onto a street sign, yelling and screaming for us to let her join the line, and we had her horizontal, pulling her by the legs. It was a little embarrassing.

 

To make her feel better we walked over to Stewart’s Shops, a gas station/eatery that seems very common in these parts. Ana, Ben, and I created a faux-queue by standing next to the hot dog roller and she jumped in line behind us, overcome with glee. I crafted a magnificent hot dog complete with ketchup, relish, and a bunch of steamy meat sauce while Ana and Ben went for a more basic version. Kate doesn’t dig on swine, so she ordered a waffle chicken sandwich, a very strange looking item and we all went outside, sat at the picnic tables, and enjoyed our highway lunch. Ana also picked up a big jug of fancy vanilla ice cream which we shared for dessert.

Back at the boats, Kate and Ben decided to hang back and do some boat jobs while Ana and I took the dinghy over to Hudson to see what that town had to offer. We slid the dinghy into the public dock, very excited to test out our new safety chain, then realized we have forgotten both the lock and the key, so had to do a quick return trip. The system is a super thick, ten foot long, bolt-cutter resistant chain with a big fat stainless steel lock which connects the motor and dinghy to anything solid - in this case a bow-roller bolted to the dock.

 

From here we walked quite far to the downtown area and reached the base of Warren Street and let me tell you, I have never seen anything quite like it. The street was arrow-straight and must have been at least a mile long, and on it was a never-ending sequence of fanciness. Art galleries, vintage clothing shops, fancy cafes, high end fashion stores, custom and vintage furniture shops, an opera house, a theatre, funky bookstores with Democrat-friendly titles, gourmet food boutiques, wine shops, hair stylists, and at the end was a Democrat campaign office. The trucks we’d gotten used to seeing everywhere else were replaced with Tesla, Porsche, and Lexus vehicles. The people were either well dressed, or hippy’d up and there were plenty of same sex couples, all with beautiful teeth and classy footwear. The contrast with every other town we’d visited so far with their Trump signs, beaten up downtowns, beaten up people, and deserted buildings was striking. And it made sense of the chaotic political situation we see in the US. It really is a tale of two realities.

Ana’s uncanny retail radar picked up a thrift shop and I found a super classy new shirt with snaps for seven buck plus a Richard Dawkins book on Athiesm, and a God book showing how quantum mechanic principles prove reincarnation, fifty cents each, sure to bring me fresh enlightenment. Ana struck out, but she gets a lot of joy just digging around in these places.

 

Ana found an Aldi store that was a mile or so away so we started walking and almost immediately came across a huge liquor superstore (where I bought a 1.75 litre bottle of Captain Morgan’s spiced rum for $37), then directly after that was an authentic Salvadorian pupusaria, where we enjoyed three delicious pupusas and made friends with the three sisters who owned the place and their kids who were running around causing trouble.

 

Aldi was a shopping extravaganza and we bought enough food to last us three weeks. An Uber picked us up, dashed us back to the dinghy which we loaded up with our bags, zipped back across the river to Athens, unloaded everything, then joined Kate and Ben for dinner at Stella’s Pizza, and came home with two days’ worth of leftovers.

That, my friends, is how you make one day feel like a week.

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.

July 28, 2023 – Coffee Mishap, Exploring Toronto, and a Midnight Visitor

We drink instant coffee on the boat. It’s easy, it’s fast, and it tastes pretty good. We do, however, have the capability to make great coffee on the boat and that is done with the Aeropress, a type of French press, but with the capacity of only a single cup. Whenever we have boat guests I always crack out the Aeropress to make coffee. Angela’s coffee comes out perfectly and I serve it to her in the cockpit. Now, Sheila’s. I set the Aeropress down on the top loading refrigerator, dump at least two tablespoons of coffee into the chamber, pour in boiling water, then mix it up with a spoon. As I flip the Aeropress on top of the coffee cup to do the plunging, something goes wrong and it falls and comes apart, spilling boiling hot coffee ground water all over the counter and into the edges of the fridge, splattering all over the food and drinks within. It is a goddamn mess and over the next 3o minutes I go through half a paper towel roll and several rags to clean it up. It’s all Sheila’s fault.

After breakfast we toss the lines and motor into Toronto’s National Yacht Club, where we will spend the next two nights for the low, low price of free as they offer gratis slips to reciprocal members of other yacht clubs. We have a hugfest on the dock with Angela and Sheila then they are off to retrieve their car and drive back into Brantford. Which leaves Ana and I all alone with a full day ahead of us in this amazing city.

We begin by jumping in the dinghy and motoring across the harbour to the Dock Shoppe to return a boat part I didn’t end up needing. From there we go on the outside of the Toronto islands to the beach on Ward’s Island. Once again, there’s an incredible amount of activity on the water – little kids in sailing school, that giant three masted ship, and dozens of sail and powerboats. We dinghy right into the beach, lay out a towel, and sit in a sand for a while watching all the action. Once sufficiently heated up, we go for a swim to cool off then hop back in the dinghy and continue the circle tour around the islands. As we are motoring on flat water, at the perfect temperature, with an inviting breeze on our faces Ana says, “Remember this moment, this exact moment right now,” and she leans over and kisses me. “We’ll come back to this memory in January when we’re suffering through winter.”

I love my wife. She is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me and she makes me so happy, especially at moments like this.

We make the full loop around the islands and end up back at the boat where we quickly change clothes then head out to walk Toronto. It is hot as Hades so we stick to the shady sides of the streets where we can and we take it at a slow pace – there’s no rush.

As we are walking down Queen’s Quay a young girl holding a clipboard and flyers stops me.

“Have you ever heard of the Little St. Nick children’s charity?” she asks me, smiling widely and suspicously.

“Sorry, what’s that you say?” I reply as I squint through my sunglasses at the brochure she’s holding and am horrified to see an image of Santa Clause.

“Little St. Nick, it’s a children’s charity,” she explains.

“I hate Christmas,” I say bluntly and we walk away. Ana’s surprised as I’m usually pretty kind to strangers interrupting my free time with things I don’t care about, but today, on this beautiful hot day, in July, seeing an image of the Christmas elf reminds me of the 6 painful months of the year in which I despise the weather and complain endlessly as I question our life and residency choices.

We stop for cold drinks, walk around for a while, then find two free Adirondack chairs on the fabricated, but still lovely, HTO beach near the Harbourfront Centre. As soon as I lean back in that comfy chair, I am out. When I regain consciousness, I see Ana’s been eavesdropping on some other beachgoers. One dude and his buddy are flirting hard with a girl and we can hear everything they are saying. Before long, a well dressed dude walks up on the other side of us, sees a pretty girl sitting alone on a bench and says, “Mind if I sit here?” He starts chatting her up, then we hear, “I like your look,” and man is she digging it! She slides a bit closer to him and they get engaged in deep conversation. Over on the other side of Hook Up Beach one of the first dudes is now touching his target’s arm, then her leg, and she’s laughing and having fun.

“I didn’t think people knew how to do this anymore,” Ana says as she looks back and forth at the pick ups in progress.

“And they’re doing it without the use of an app. Amazing.”

We head back to the boat as we’re expecting Magnus – he is taking the train out to spend the weekend with us. I pick him up in the dingy at Trillium Park around 8 and we have a great visit with him as we make a dinner of Korean short ribs, sweet potato fries, and salad. We consider taking a walk into Toronto and finding somewhere to go for a drink but he’s pretty tired out from a busy week at work so we just hang in the boat and I go to bed at the ridiculous hour of 10 pm. Normally, this would not be possible when Lydia is around as she is this innocent looking thing who, on the first day we met her, claimed her bedtime was 10:30 and she never stayed up beyond that. Well, what a scam that was. We learned very quickly that she likes drinking wine, laughing, and telling stories until 2am and forces everybody in the vicinity to have fun right alongside her. Since she is isolated on the islands, I don’t miss the opportunity for a few extra horizonal hours.

Just after midnight I am woken up by Ana’s poking finger.

“What? Huh? What’s up?” I ask all groggy like.

“There’s something outside,” she whispers. “An evil presence.”

I listen carefully. There is a slight sloshing of water against the boat. Maybe a duck? Or a goose? Or some carps making love?

Then, the squeak of dinghy PVC against the hull and an unmistakable laugh.

“Shit!” I hiss into Ana’s ear. “It’s Lydia. Don’t move, don’t make a sound.”

“Oh no,” Ana says as she freezes and pulls the blanket over her head.

Her and Daryl have found us. She could probably sense from miles away that we were trying to go to bed early and is here to put a stop to it. We can hear them moving alongside the boat, undoubtedly peeking into the windows looking for signs of life.

Then, “Kriiiiiiiiissssss. Aaaaaaaanaaaaa. Come out and play.”

We are frozen with fear. She’s an unstoppable party machine and she’s here to destroy our good night’s sleep. We keep quiet and motionless. My mouth is dry and I start to picture how nice a beer would taste right now.

“Damnable voodoo! Devil woman! Now she’s invading my thoughts!” I whisper to Ana as I shake the image out of my head.

“Be strong,” she says.

We hear them circle the boat, then get off the dingy and up onto the floating dock. They won’t give up. But we wait them out, and soon we hear some yelling and screaming and laughing coming from a boat, probably on the other side of the marina. A pattering of feet. A splash of water as they jump into the dingy. The sound of an outboard engine firing up. They take off to investigate the party noises, and within minutes will be in somebody else’s cockpit making friends, laughing, and having fun.

The danger has passed.

2022 Sailing Trip Day 2 - Anchor by Wire, Gynecological Inspiration, and Pina Coladas

It's always exciting when a new day starts with a big surprise, so imagine my delight when Pat burst into our cabin at 3am in terror reporting that the boat was ensnarled in power lines.

"No, that's impossible!" I grumbled, mostly asleep.

"No man, we're hitting the lines, and I think the mast is electrified!"

"Can't be,' I said, trying to get back to sleep.

"Get up man, we're all going to die!"

Die seemed to be the magic word so I jumped out of bed, wearing only boxers and rat nest hair and joined Pat in the cockpit, looking up.

"Great news! I think it's only the lower hanging telephone lines we're snarled in," I said happily, then added, "Holy shit, we're screwed!"

The crew leaped into rescue action and soon all four of us were on deck with Pat and I in our underwear, girls in their sailing moo-moos, our 1000 lumen spotlight being waved around indiscriminately, one second illuminating the overhead wires, then blinding me at the helm, then shining on the terrified faces of my crewmates, then cast over the whitecapped bay. The howling wind had shifted east and the length of anchor chain that prevented us from hitting the barges was insufficient for holding the boat and our anchor had dragged, but fortunately the telephone lines currently scraping against the mast were holding us from floating further into the shallow bay and grounding ourselves. This is actually a valuable safety feature on sailboats that powerboaters don’t get with their vessels.

"Who the hell's even using a telephone landline these days?" Melissa asked as she cradled her chin and tapped her lip.

"Yeah, that's strange. Everybody's on cell service these days," nodded Ana.

We then convened a round table to discuss the current state of communications technology in the US, and I started taking meeting minutes, but then we realized we were still in deep shit, so the meeting was terminated and we resumed yelling at each other, running around on the deck, waving the spotlight around, and panicking.

I hollered at Ana to pull up the anchor as I cranked the engine and slammed it into forward gear. We immediately lurched off the lines and were clear, but the anchor was stuck and wouldn't come up. I left Pat at the helm and ran up to the bow to see what was going on. After a bit of screaming and pointing we realized the steel pin locking the anchor chain in place hadn't been removed, which became more difficult as the pin was now all bent up, but I managed to yank it out, scraping a layer of skin from my knuckle, and the anchor started coming up. Pat drove the boat back into the wind towards the state park docks then called me back to take over as he said there was no damn way he was going to dock the boat. Even though I knew his skill level was high, and he could probably do it blindfolded, I took over the wheel.

We circled the area around the docks, looking for a place we might be able to squeeze SeaLight's wide ass into and found enough dock length in one spot to try. Fortunately, the wind was parallel to the dock, making it quite easy to slide her in and once close enough, the crew jumped off the boat and tied the lines down to the available cleats, but not before Ana landed one of her feet in a large pile of goose shiza, and soiled her only pair of socks, which was really the only lasting damage from this particular screw-up, besides the bent anchor pin.

Several hours later it was daytime and we got up, all cool like, tied up to the dock, wondering if anybody was fortunate enough to see the clown show we put on for them in the early hours. We did not notice anybody snickering.

The ladies heated up an amazing breakfast casserole that Melissa had prepared in advance of the trip and we enjoyed a big meal in the cockpit with the beautiful sun shining down through clear skies. I assured our guests that epic disasters were a vital part of the sailing experience, and it was good we had the first one under our belts.

While the girls were getting ready, Pat and I worked with Daryl on some electrical issues he was having with the boat, until I got distracted with trying to fly the parasailing Barbie we had purchased while on vacation in Mexico earlier this year. It is like a kite but way worse as there must be a hundred strings attaching the doll to the parachute and they got horribly tangled, but not before I did get her into the air for a brief, but magnificent ride.

We jammed the five of us into our nine-foot dingy and motored back up the harbour to the busy part where we saw the restaurant and band the previous night. We tied up at the gas dock, checked out the gift shop/convenience store, then began walking to the town of Wilson, which was only a mile or two away.

Daryl and Lydia caught up to us about halfway there, just as we were admiring one of the impeccably maintained houses, which were similar to many we'd seen in many other small lake towns of the US - two story, white picket fence, and universally displaying a US flag and often several US pennants hung over the porch rails. The sense of nationalism here is unlike anywhere else.

There wasn't a lot to see in town, but we did find a nice park where we found a baby swing for Beau, and had a swing for ourselves, then moved onto the surprisingly large and well provisioned grocery store where we all picked up some booze and Pat struck gold with a gigantic plastic jar of like 500 pretzel sticks, which he claimed really supplemented the beer drinking experience. As for me, well I scored two cases of Yuengling beer, which is by far my favourite summertime boat brew, and haven't been able to get any due to the closed borders so I was smiling the entire way back, despite my arms feeling like they were about to drop off.

Once back at the boat, Melissa laid baby Beau down on the floor of the cabin while we unloaded the provisions and found places to store them. At one point Pat looked over to see Ana standing over Beau as she was putting away some groceries and he was looking directly up her dress, smiling and mesmerized.

"When he becomes a gynecologist later in life, I wonder if he'll remember his first moment of inspiration?'" Pat said.

"I sure will," I replied as I took a photo then high-fived Beau.

Melissa took Beau down for a nap, I put on the Santana Supernatural cd and we got settled into the cockpit for a beer. It wasn't long before both Ana and Pat started sliding further and further down onto the seats, with droopy eyes, so I took the cue and retired to the comfy v-berth and we all napped for nearly two hours as Santana played smoothly on repeat.

The day's adventuring finished with one final dingy ride into the harbour to meet Daryl and Lydia for a pina colada at the simple yet groovy little dockside Five Coconuts bar. We all agreed they were the tastiest pina coladas we’d ever encountered on Earth.

2022 Sailing Trip Day 1 - Wiener Dogs, Krazy Binz, and Rubber Vajay-jays

The day had finally arrived. The moment I most look forward to all year. Everything in the world seemed right as we casted off the lines and embarked on our annual sailing trip, this year on Lake Ontario to explore the US side, which had not been possible the last two years because of the pandemic.

Our friends Pat and Melissa and their baby boy Beau had taken residence in the two aft cabins of our sailboat SeaLight while Ana and I took over the front v-berth. We powered out of our home port Newport Yacht Club at 3:30 pm and into the lake. There was no wind and the lake surface was glass so we continued by motor power alone, pointed towards the town of Wilson, New York.

Most people assume sailors don't go anywhere near the lake unless there are 20 knot winds and white capped waves. Well, I can assure you that is not true. While we do like having wind to push us along, we also love being on flat water, motoring along at a comfortable 7 knots without sails, enjoying the smooth ride. And that is exactly what we had today.

We know Pat and Melissa from the many years we spent in sailing from Port Dover and were overjoyed when they expressed some interest in joining us on the boat trip. They are experienced power boaters and have been around boats their entire lives but have never done an extended trip on a sailboat. Pat is also a millwright and has suffered through countless boat disasters so has a real knack for fixing anything that might go BOOM on SeaLight. The best part is that their little boy Beau is only 8 months old so exposing him to the wonders of sailboats at this formative time just may turn him into a future sailor.

We were about halfway to Wilson when Melissa was in the cockpit and wanted to go down in the cabin but was too impatient to take the stairs so instead just stepped right off and took the elevator option straight down, sending herself arse over tea kettle, splayed out on the cabin floor. Ana and I initially felt awful, until Pat explained that Melissa always starts off her boat trips with a spectacular wipeout and really wouldn't have it any other way. We felt better after learning this, but I did have Ana check to make sure they had properly filled out their SeaLight liability waivers.

Shortly after this we decided to stop the boat and have a swim. Pat and I jumped in right away, but the ladies decided to give it a miss as the water temperature at 22 degrees Celsius was not sufficiently balmy; they would wait for warmer bays. As we were getting dried off, our friends Lydia and Daryl and their 16 year old wiener dog named Chili Dog passed by us in their power boat. They had decided to join us on our trip which was perfect as we always like to travel with power boat friends so they can get to the marinas first, find the best slips, scope out the area, pay for all the dockage, then have cold drinks waiting for us when we finally arrive by sail, many hours later.

We arrived in Wilson at dusk and were mesmerized by the pretty harbour, with boats of all shapes and sizes on one side and classic American cottages on the other, plus a busy restaurant near the entrance to the harbour, with a live band playing. We motored to the end of harbour and found our friends tied up at the state park docks, but there didn't look to be sufficient room anywhere for SeaLight so instead we anchored in the bay, but because of huge barges that were also anchored there I had to put out less chain than I normally would to prevent us from swinging around and crashing into one of them. And we couldn't move further into the bay away from the barges as there were power lines overhead, and we wanted to avoid those despite the chart showing they were 75 feet high which gave our mast plenty of clearance. The anchor seemed to stick well and soon we were settled, with drinks in hand, in the comfort of the bug-free, fully enclosed cockpit. Lydia and Daryl arrived shortly after that in their dingy and we spent several hours discussing important matters of the world...but also the “Krazy Binz” liquidation store in Stoney Creek near our marina and the five-dollar rubber vagina I found there recently, but was forbidden by Ana to purchase it, despite the potential of it being the best gag gift ever.

Brockville to the Navy Islands

I am normally a pretty positive guy but the cool and rainy weather was really bumming me out. In years past we have been spoiled with good weather on our annual sailing trips where the sweltering hot days are pleasantly broken up by dips in the cool lake, shirts and shoes are rarely worn, the AC is the most critical piece of equipment in the boat, and the crew is always on the lookout for fresh ice. Well, this trip was all about sweaters, hot coffee, rain gear, cabin salon dinners, and heroic but painful leaps into the freezing cold water. Wha’ append? It turned out that in 2021, summer would not arrive until mid-August.

Fortunately, the company was as good as ever so we made the best of it, and did quite enjoy the amazing sleeps we enjoyed at anchor with the cool nighttime temperatures. And Stella did get to rotate through all the different outfits she had brought for the trip instead of just wearing shorts and a tank top all the time.

We had some nice bran muffins for breakfast – at least Angela and I did, and I learned that not everybody in the world loves them as I do. I had my suspicions the week before the trip when I was thinking of making a batch of bran muffins so I texted Tony the following:

“Do you guys like bran muffins?”

He replied, “Bran muffins?? Those are laced with cocktails of bad stuff…bran muffins! God help us.”

I knew none of my family liked them either so was starting to think I was weird or something, so the relief was welcome when Angela bought a box of them. Butter, raisins, grainy stuff, fibre - what’s not to like?

We pulled anchor and sailed back westward against the current along a similar route that brought us here. The weather remained crummy right up until we arrived at the Navy Islands and found an anchorage amongst the dozens of boats that were already there. As we dropped anchor the clouds vanished, the sun appeared, and the holy rays shone down on SeaLight and her weary crew. Shirts and jeans were unceremoniously stripped and tossed in favour of swimmers, and we exploded from the cockpit to the open deck with fruity drinks and some sweet summer reggae tunes blasting from the speakers. After some time on deck, and some leaps into the water, and some tricky moves from Stella on the paddleboard, and more drinks, and lots of laughs we found ourselves all sprawled out on the deck when I exclaimed, “This is the best moment of 2021!” And it was. After months and months of lockdowns, masks, deaths, sickness, anti-vaxxers, idiotic conspiracy theories, hours upon hours of Netflix,  isolation, sneaking around, and all the other unhappy results of this pandemic, here we were enjoying a beautiful day on our boat with friends and not giving a damn nor thought to Covid. It was the best moment of 2021.

To make things better, Andrew cruised out in his new ultra fancy power boat to meet us for a drink and we had a lovely long visit covering all sorts of topics regular people generally don’t discuss, including how close a relationship a man can have with his dog.

“I really loved Belle, she was the best dog ever,” Andrew reminisced.

“Yes she was, we all loved her. Labs are the nicest dogs.” I replied.

“When I was single I thought maybe it could be just me and her forever.”

“Uh. Like a relationship?”

“Yeah. She was beautiful, caring, loving, a great listener - really everything you need in a partner.”

“I suppose. She did have quite small breasts though.”

“Sure, but there were lots of them.”

We tried talking Andrew into staying for dinner but Victoria already had something on the go so he had to leave, taking our remarkable and forbidden conversation with him. I do miss our little chats.

Before dinner I went for one more swim and a little snorkeling adventure. I swam close to the shoreline and saw more fish than I’ve ever seen in Lake Ontario – bass, pike, perch and even a catfish that scared the crap out of me after I dove down 20 feet to take a closer look at a giant hole in the side of an underwater bank and as I stuck my head in to have a peek, this giant freakish fish came out and nearly brushed my face with his feelers. This nice thing about being underwater is when you pee your pants from fear it really doesn’t matter.

Dinner was magnificent – grilled chicken and fresh veggies, followed up with cockpit cocktail then a couple games of Sequence, a board game that takes little skill, is fast, and folds up nicely – perfect for boating!

The Secret Tunnel of Brockville

The poor weather that started yesterday continued into today and we awoke to grey skies and rain. And the forecast didn’t look great. Despite the cool morning, I put on my shorts and jumped on the paddleboard for an early morning lake bath.

Once the crew was woke, showered, and fed we motored into Gilbert’s marina in Brockville to top up the water tanks and drop off the ladies for a shopping expedition. Tony and I then motored back out to the closest anchorage we could find – Skelton Island and got SeaLight securely anchored before heading back to shore for our own non-retail explorations.

We got drenched from the rain and waves during our short dingy ride to the marina. We tied up then proceeded to the dockmaster’s office, where we found a most unusual set of tools lying in the corner: a huge cutting saw, a chainsaw, a jackhammer, steel pry bars, and an axe or two. We theorized the following:

“Brockville marina, Brockville marina. This is Dainty Sailor heading into the marina looking for a slip. Over.”

“Dainty Sailor, what length of boat are you? Over.”

“Uh, what do you charge per foot? Over.”

“Two dollars and fifty cents per foot. Over.”

“Ok. Uh, we’re a 34 footer. Over.”

“Please proceed to slip E14. Over and out.”

Shortly after the captain of Dainty Sailor gets tied up and pays dockage for his vessel, the dockmaster and his helper go out to the slip with a measuring tape and the crate of aforementioned demolition tools.

“Hmmm. According to this measuring tape Dainty Sailor is 37 feet long. But he only paid for a 34. So let’s make it a 34! Fire up the chainsaw!”

When the thrifty captain returns to his boat he finds the first three feet of his boat sliced off and the rest of it sinking slowly with the dockmaster and his mate leaning up against a tree, brandishing their weaponized tools, winking at the captain and offering a double thumbs up.

Not that the honorable captain of SeaLight would ever lie about the length of her to save a few bucks, but In retrospect, I feel rather happy they had no space here and we’re safely at anchor.

With the ladies nowhere in site, we walk a short distance over to the Brockville Railway 

Tunnel, a place I’d never heard of, but one I’ll be telling everybody about. Canada’s first underground railway tunnel opened for business in 1860 and was used extensively in fueling the growth of this nation and then eventually fell into disrepair and was decomissioned in the 1970’s. Fortunately, the structure was rehabilitated and reopened as a pedestrian tunnel and tourist attraction in 2017. The tunnel is half a kilometer long and features some amazing geological curiosities, all highlighted by constantly colour-shifting LED lighting. It is truly one of the coolest things I’ve seen in Ontario and definitely worth the visit.

After exploring the tunnel Tony and I hustled through the rain and found two nice bar stools at Moose McGuire’s pub in the downtown core where we moved onto our second activity of the day - exploring local brews. The bar was totally hokey, with all sorts of Canadiana kitch hanging off the walls – moose heads, elk antlers, racoon tails, hockey jerseys, canoes, and, of couse, a bunch of televisions showing hockey replays and, later, some kind of online hockey video game championship which was just mesmerizing in its stupidity.

The ladies took a break from their shopping extravanagza and joined us for lunch. They each displayed their purchased wares in turn and Tony and I politely clapped. Lunch was unspectacularly typical for such a standard-issue sports pub, but it was certainly filling and laden with calories to fuel our vacationing bodies. By that time, we’d seen enough of the town so the boys dingy’d back to SeaLight for rum and cokes while the ladies continued their retal therapy.

When the ladies were ready to return, they rang up the Uber Dingy Hotline and Tony and I took turns retrieving them. Tony discovered that if you were running the dingy solo, and maxed out the throttle, and moved forward to the bow, that little 4 horsepower Mercury engine could indeed get her up on plane, resuliting in blistering fast speeds, but a total lack of control because you couldn’t reach the handle from there, unless you used your foot, which turned out to be quite fun.

During my run back to shore, I spotted a man and his two kids in a small sailboat struggling with its engine so I did my good deed of the day and towed them back in to the marina. On the water, karma rules, and you do everything you can to help other boaters, as your own next breakdown is never far around the corner.

The day finished with a cool swim, a hot meal, and an onboard fashion show by Stella, proudly showcasing her fabulous new fashions.

Kingston to Lindsay Island

You know what’s nice? Waking up and having a nice freshly brewed coffee. You know what’s really nice? Drinking that coffee on a beautiful deck of a beautiful house overlooking the beautiful St. Lawrence River. We had a lovely long chat with Andrew and Vic, catching up on recent events and bitching a fair bit about how a year and a half of Covid and four years of the orange clown to the south has turned so many people into utter idiots. Once we got that out of our sytem we got back to the poo jokes and things felt normal and happy again.

Sadly, our hosts had to head into work so the three of dingy’d back to SeaLight and had a nice big breakfast, than sailed her back across the bay and anchored in front of Andrew’s place. The wind was much lighter now so it was safe to anchor. I went for a swim and hooked on the mask and snorkel to go and chase perch around for a while while the ladies lounged in the cockpit. I couldn’t help but to swim over to dock area to get a close up view of the bottom, and it was no wonder we hit a rock as there were dozens of them scattered across the ground, but I couldn’t find any with a blue bottom paint stain so we must not have whacked it hard enough.

Shortly after noon, our friends Angela and Tony arrived, yay! We don’t go anywhere without them, which presented a bit of a logistial challenge this year as they too had sold their boat at the end of last season but had decided to try land yachting this year (hint…think RV). Fortunately they agreed to sign on as crew for SeaLight so we’d all be traveling in the same vessel this time around.

We hooked them up with arrival bevvies in the cockpit, them moved back to the upper dock lounge when Andrew and Vic returned from work. There, we drank beer and smoked cigars and all was good with the world. But soon, it was time to go.

We set the sails on SeaLight and began our slow ride eastward down the Bateau Channel. The ride was smooth, slow, and relaxing as we passed such a diverse array of housing along the way – many multi-million dollar mansions, small family cottages, camp sites, and even waterfront trailer parks. Something for everybody.

The Admiralty Islands is the name given to the first island group in the Thousand Islands chain, which really starts at Gananoque and reaches as far east as Brockville. We threaded our way through the channels and many boats that were already anchored in the area and found a suitable spot just west of Lindsay Islands. By “suitable” I mean the only spot we could squeak into that didn’t already have a bot – there must have been 30 to 40 boats in the anchorage, which is one of the downsides of visiting a beautiful and accessible cruising ground in the height of the summer season.

The five of us gathered in the cockpit for happy hour then enjoyed dinner and conversation into the evening. As the sun dropped and day was replaced by night, a menagerie of twinkling lights appeared from the tops of masts, from cockpits, from cell phones, and from the odd camera flash of cruisers trying to capture that special memory. But despite the potential for a massive boat party, it was very quiet in the anchorage. Our first night together in the Thousand Islands.

Kingston

It has become clear that the greatest feature of our new boat versus the old one is the gloriously large and covered cockpit. Our old boat Bella Blue had a modest bimini cover over the cockpit, but not a dodger (which covers the front) nor side panels so when the weather got bad, you were putting on foul weather gear and getting splashed in the face. When the bugs got bad you were swinging the basura wildly and constantly cleaning the cockpit out with buckets of water to rinse out the insect corpses. And when it was cold outside you would freeze at the helm.

SeaLight has a full cockpit enclosure so it remains warm, cozy, clean, and bug-free. While the visibility without a cockpit cover is superior, you can still see quite well through the transparent plastic panes, but to be sure you can just unzipper one of them and stick your head out every once in a while to scan the water for other boats. But this comfort comes at a cost – remaining conscious during the overnight shift becomes exceedingly difficult. On Bella Blue, it was easy staying awake as you were either shivering uncontrollably or batting bugs or usually both. Plus you were standing up most of the time and wearing a bulky, uncomfortable lifejacket tethered to the helm to prevent yourself from an accidental fall off the boat. On Sealight it was all decorator pillows, prone position, salty snacks, and cozy, sleep-inducing temperatures so despite both of us remaining in the cockpit for most of the evening, there were times when we drifted off to la-la land while the boat steamed on.

Fortunately there was literally nobody else on the lake. Besides two far away freighters we could barely see across the lake, we did not see a single other boat until we had been on the water for 15 hours and were approaching Kingston. The wind finally picked up in the morning so we deployed the sails and enjoyed some engine free sailing. After breakfast I advised the ladies to shield their eyes while I engaged in a chilly bucket and sponge bath on the swim platform so that we wouldn’t have to pull the sails in and stop the boat.

This was the first trip where we were a crew of three instead of four. Magnus had scored a summer job as a camp councillor with the City of Brantford, and was also working weekend shifts at a local grocery store so he was unable to join us, although we had worked out a plan for us to come make it out during the two weekends which our trip would cover, so we were looking forward to seeing him then.

We arrived at our friend Andrew’s waterfront house late in the afternoon and despite his previous measurements of water depth at his dock being well under the required amount for our boat, we decided to give it the old college try anyway.  I pointed the bow of SeaLight towards shore and we tenderly powered ahead, watching the depth gauge. 10 feet. 9 feet. 8 feet. 7 feet.

“Good so far!” I yelled to Ana on the bow and Andrew on the dock.

6 feet. Then a sudden stop as the keel hit an immovable rock.

“Whoops, that’s it, out of water. Sorry about that blue bottom paint on your rock!” I hollered as I punched it into reverse and backed out. We didn’t get too close but it was worth a try.

Because the southerly wind was picking up we decided to anchor across the channel in a bay that was well sheltered instead of trying to anchor off the lee shore – never a good idea. We dropped anchor and stuck it right away, which was a nice change from Bella Blue where anchoring was always tricky and the Delta and Danforth anchors she had just didn’t work nearly as well as the Rocna type one on SeaLIght. We gathered up our things, deployed the dingy, then the three of us hopped in and motored back across the channel to the dock, tied up, and joined the rather large gang of people on Andrew’s upper dock deck – neighbours, family, dogs. We were already well acquainted with all of them so we exchanged greetings and salutations then got to work on the Bud Lights stacked up in the fridge. It was nice to be back on land after a long ride, and to enjoy the company of these fine folks. Andrew and Victoria’s newish puppy Emma made us feel especially welcome by dashing into the water to get fully soaked, then returning to the upper deck to stand in front of each of us in turn and doing the doggy shake to unleash 8 litres of hairy water directly into our laps and faces. The misting actually felt quite nice.

As afternoon slipped into evening, the horde migrated to Andrew’s house, ordered up a mess of pizza and poutine then stuffed our faces and got into the Guiness and red wine. We were feeling buzzy and comfortable, but Andrew’s neighbour Bob was not, as he could simply not believe that we had left our boat anchored across the bay on its own. So he would get up every few minutes and walk to the patio door to ensure he could still see the mast light, and that it appeared to be coming from approximately the same location.

It must have been near midnight when we decided it was time to dingy back to the boat. So we walked down to the dock, accompanies by the hard core partiers, and discovered the wind speed had doubled or tripled and there were huge whitecaps bashing up against the dock. There was no way our little dingy was going to get us back to the boat; in fact it likely wouldn’t have gotten us to the end of the dock without being swamped. So Andrew and Victoria invited us back in to stay at the house, which is quite a privilege as the neighbours confirmed he refuses to let anybody sleep in his amazing lower level, complete with three fully furnished bedrooms, a full kitchen, popcorn machine, giant ship’s wheel, video game system, 9 sprayer shower system, hot tub, wonderfully folded towels, an excellent smell, and fully stocked fridges. Why does he let us? I think it’s mainly because of Stella. He was pretty much her first friend and she’s had him wrapped around her finger ever since.

The 2021 Sailing Trip Begins!

The sunlight was faltering and the weeds reached up hungrily from the bottom of the marina as SeaLight slowly pulled away from the dock. We were racing to depart while there was still sunlight, and ended up leaving at the worst possible time – when there seems to be enough light to navigate the narrow channels of the marina, but there actually isn’t and you’re moving blind.

I misjudged the turn into the channel and narrowly missed scraping SeaLight’s sides against the anchors protruding from the bows of boats on the next dock over, with inches to spare. We squeaked back into the main channel where we then faced our next challenge – the underwater weeds, which began winding themselves up on our prop mercilessly. Because our boat needs over six feet of water to float, and the depth of the water in the channel in some spots is just under six feet, I need to keep our speed up to push the keel through the muck. So I gave her extra throttle, which barely made a difference in our speed as the weeds just wound tighter and tighter around the prop making it difficult to accelerate.

After a laborious mile or two we made it out of the marina and into the open water. I put the boat into neutral, then shifted into reverse and gave it a hard thrust to spin the weeds off the prop, which usually results in a small island’s worth of greenery floating up to the surface, but since it was now dark I couldn’t see anything, so I assumed they were off and we continued east, pointed directly for the south end of Prince Edward County, where we would round the corner then head north-east up to our buddy Andrew’s place near Kingston, for a total trip length of nearly 130 nautical miles (230 kilometers). The wind had dropped to zero so this was going to be a motorboat ride. As we settled into the long trip with the auto-pilot engaged, something in the back of my mind was bugging me. It seemed like the RPMs on the engine were too high for the speed we were doing. But since we had barely used the boat yet, I didn’t know for sure how the engine should sound or run at this speed, unlike our old boat which I knew intimately. Deciding to ignore my gut at my peril, the peril did indeed arrive about half an hour later. Ana and I were relaxing in the cockpit when all of a sudden from down below Stella says, “What is that horrible smell?” I went down below and a grey cloud of smoke was pouring from the engine room so I yelled at Ana to kill it.

Here we go, I thought. We always have at least one major problem on a major sailing trip on the Great Lakes – you just don’t expect it to happen so damn soon. I opened the engine access compartments, put the headlight flashlight on, grabbed some screwdrivers and sockets and started trying to figure out what the hell had happened. I checked belts, hoses, thru-hulls, the exhaust system, the oil, the transmission fluid, the coolant, the filters, but everything seemed perfectly fine and I couldn’t figure out where the smell was coming from. Covered in sweat and grease, I was about to start some drastic and desperate measures when I thought I better try the simple fix first. We started up the engine and put it into reverse then gave it a hard spin. We still couldn’t see any weeds coming up, but when I put it back into forward gear and brought her up to speed, the RPMs were much lower and the engine and handling felt better. That was it, the goddamn marina weeds!

I cleaned myself up, reset the auto-pilot, then Ana, Stella and I sat nervously in the cockpit for an hour waiting for something bad to happen…but it didn’t. The visions of having to call the coast guard to get shamefully towed back into harbour, then spend several days begging mechanics to fix our boat began to fade and we could finally relax and enjoy the night sail across this giant freshwater ocean.

The SeaLight Adventure Starts Now

When we bought SeaLight she was high and dry on a boat cradle at Wigger's Custom Yachts in Bowmanville, Ontario. She had been there for the winter season after having some repairs done and a new paint job last fall. Wigger's is known to be one of the best boat repair shops around, but the trick is actually getting in and out of their harbour entrance with currently low water levels.

We had reserved a slip at Port Whitby Marina, just 15 miles or so west of Bowmanville, but with the additional pandemic lockdown measures put in place by the Ontario government, there was no telling when the marina would be able to open. So we came up with a plan. We would launch her on May 23 and my buddy Andrew would join me in sailing her to his waterfront house and dock just east of Kingston, about 113 nautical miles away or about 22 hours sailing. Then we would just travel up there on the weekends and enjoy the boat at a nice private residence while the province took their time opening things up. I scheduled the boat launch and everything was set...until I got a text at 5:30 in the morning from Andrew a few days before departure.

"Hey, what's the draft on the new boat, like 5 feet?"

"Nope. 6.5 feet - it's a full keel."

"Oh man, I didn't know it was that deep, Bella Blue only had about 4 feet, right?"

"Yep, and when we sailed her to your place last time she floated nicely on the dock with plenty of water beneath the boat so we should be good."

"Uh, I don't know - the lake levels are down like 2 feet."

"Oh shit."

"I'll go and measure."

Sure enough, there was only 5 feet of water at the deepest point on his dock. There was brief talk of dredging, putting down a mooring, anchoring in the middle of the channel, and a few other totally impractical ideas, then we realized the plan was toast.

I called Wigger's and moved the launch date to the following Friday, hoping that the gov't would east up on restrictions in the coming week. Fortunately, they did, and the marina sent notice they would be opening! Plan B was drop-kicked into high gear. My buddy Tony volunteered to drive the two of us up to Bowmanville Thursday after work for an early Friday morning drop-in, despite the forecasted weather looking less than promising.

Tony arrived right at 4:30pm on Thursday and we were off. The drive took a bit longer than usual due to rush hour traffic (which is a Covid fraction of what it normally is this time of day), but we arrived and I gave Tony a quick tour of the boat. We then launched into action and finished up a few remaining jobs to get her ready for the water, then we walked down to the launch site and gave the mast a good cleaning as it was covered in bird poo and spider webs from a long winter in the storage yard. We finished up around 9pm then returned to the boat for a huge feed of sheppard's pie and a couple of beers to wash it down.

By 8:30am Sealight was on a trailer and being towed by a backhoe down to the nearby launch site. The three gents from Wigger's then eased her into the massive travel lift and raised her up so we could splash some bottom paint on the cradle pad marks. By now it was freezing outside, having dropped nearly 20 degrees in the previous 24 hours, and at one point it started snowing horizontally. Painful, considering every day of that week the weather had been clear, calm and hot.

The lads rolled the travel lift into the launch well and slowly dropped her in. I jumped aboard to check for leaks and fortunately found none. The next step was to put up the mast, which is done with a boom truck that is stationed beside the well. They winched up the mast, maneuvered it into place, but as they were about to drop it, something soft and fleshy plopped from inside the mast down onto the deck of the boat. A dead baby bird. And after some foot hammering on the bottom of the mast, three other abandoned bird bodies flopped out, along with a pound of straw and grass from the next. They were unceremoniously flipped into the water then the mast and rigging was set into place.

Once all that was complete, we stood back and had a look. One of the shrouds (these are the stainless steel lines that connect the mast and spreaders to the deck) was floppy and they weren't able to adjust it enough to take the slack out so we feared the company that had just built all this brand new rigging for the boat had made a mistake and cut that one too long. Major problem. But because of the awful weather, the Wigger's guys didn't want to send anybody up in a bosun's chair to investigate further so we decided to abandon plans to leave today and instead work on it tomorrow, which was inevitable as the crashing surf at the harbour entrance was going to prevent us from leaving anyway.

I got onboard, started the engine and started backing up into the channel but soon got grounded and it took some fancy maneuvering with engine, lines, and people to wiggle her out and get her tied up at the dock. She was in the water, safely tied up, and we were cold and starving so we broke for lunch.

JP's Pita Deli is a local eatery where Magnus had picked up some delicious food for us a few weeks prior so we stopped in. JP's is not your average donair dump; it's more like a temple, dedicated to JP himself! The walls are papered with huge images of JP in the 70's as a Greek shmoozer wearing bell bottoms, open chested shirts, gold chains, and manly man-hair everywhere. There's one with him and his Camaro. There's one with chicks draping their arms around him. There's one of him wearing some kind of Indian/Led Zeppelinesque glitter robe. It's a full-on tribute to Greek Studmuffinism. Within 5 minutes he had made Tony and I two gigantic giros, told us all about his current life (working 7 days a week), related a few stories of all the babes he shagged in his Camaro and the resulting state of the upholstery, then offered us shots of Johnny Walker. When we politely turned him down he said he'd drink our shots for us and poured a huge mouthful for himself and gulped it down. I liked him right away.

We returned to the boat, ate our giros, then Tony headed back home and I mucked around in the boat for the afternoon, taking care of a number of inside jobs. Ana and the kids arrived early that evening and were happy to finally see Sealight floating. They brought a pot of chili so we warmed that up, ate it, and I was sleeping by 10pm while the rest of them stayed up longer enjoying the pleasures of the warm boat.

Todd, the previous owner of the boat, arrived Saturday morning and we got to work trying to fix the rigging. I was hauled up the bosun's char and after well over an hour of adjusting turnbuckles, measuring, hammering, twisting, slackening, tightening, detaching, and reattaching, we finally threw in the towel and admitted that the one piece of rigging was too long and needed to be returned to the shop for shortening. We then moved onto putting up the boom, installing the sailbag, and raising the headsail to get the boat ready to go in case we could get out in the afternoon. Robert from Wigger's came by, had a look at the water and decided it was still too rough, and we couldn't go out, but he did schedule the launch for the next morning at 8:30am since the forecast called for no wind and flat water conditions. With that, Todd went home and we spent the rest of the afternoon swabbing the outside decks and cleaning her up. The boat was really dirty, but by the end of our cleaning it was looking pretty damn good.

I installed the barbeque grill on the back of the boat and we cooked an excellent dinner then enjoyed it in the expansive, bug-free cockpit as we admired the resident swans paddling up and down the channel looking for their own meals.

One of the powerboaters further up the channel decided to take his boat out for a rip but as he was backing up he got completely stuck in the mud and was only able to pull it free by attaching a long line to his buddy's 4x4 on shore and getting out in the knee deep water and pushing from behind. This did not bode well for our 6.5 foot draft.

The Wigger's boys arrived early Sunday morning and by the time Todd arrived at 8:30, we were totally ready to go. They gave us the briefing, and the briefing was this: there was only 3.5 feet of water in parts of the channel, and our boat's keel needs over 6 feet of water, therefore they would attach the spare spinnaker halyards from the top of the mast to one of the power boats and he would drive the boat away from ours pulling down on the mast which would tip the boat onto its side and raise the keel, thereby reducing the draft. The other boat would tie a line to the bow cleat and tow us ahead and out of the channel. Now, this is not the way one would typically leave a harbour entrance, but there was really no other option besides having the boat trucked, and that would probably cost as much as seasonal dockage and take weeks to schedule.

Previous to this day, I was warned several times by Wigger's staff of the terror of this operation. When I was asking the owner's son about the infamous process the day before, he told me, "Everybody should try it once." I've heard the same thing said about eating durian fruit, Filet Americain, hakarl, and balut. If you don't know what those are, look them up and you'll see what I mean.

Todd and I boarded the boat while he others watched from shore. Thankfully Todd reminded me to plug the thru-hulls on the starboard side of the boat where we would be heeling, so I got some wooden dowels and pounded them into the holes, otherwise the water would have poured into the boat. I started the engine and piloted her through the narrow channel and got further than I thought I would as the boat came to a halt with the keel stuck in the sand bottom. The power boats revved into action, pulling sideways and forward and the boat immediately started to heel. Over she went, steeper and steeper until the keel pulled free and we began making progress through the channel. I turned off the engine as the propeller was surely now sticking out of water with the angle of the heel. The water started sloshing over the rails, but there was nothing much for us to do except watch and hold on tight!

At one point, the bow of the boat swung towards shore and we were headed straight for the rocks so the Wigger's boys cut the power and she swung back upwards, sticking the keel into the mud but thankfully avoiding the sharp rocks. Getting her off was tough, as the power boats leaned into the throttle, putting massive pressure on the mast and rope, and she eventually released with a groan and we were making progress again, but this time aimed more towards the middle of the channel. The boat was now nearly sideways, probably a 50 - 60 degree angle as she was dragged through the water, like a lion hauling a freshly killed gazelle by the broken neck across the savanna. I had now shifted my footing so that I was no longer standing on the floor of the cockpit; instead I was standing on the wall of the cockpit and the water was rushing far up over the rails, soaking the bottom edges of the canvas cockpit enclosure. Todd was sitting on the high side of the boat, looking down at me, and he seemed to be quite enjoying the ride as the new non-owner of the vessel. I am sure the bystanders on land thought we were trying to purposely sink the boat as they saw the steep heeling and the keel and prop sticking out of the water. I expect they also felt some embarrassment, similar to seeing a flash of bum under a pretty girl's dress, knowing you should probably look away, but instead succumbing to the irresistible urge to stare. After spending so many years sailing I know the physics of a sailboat are such that they can't really be tipped over, but I was worried about all the pressure being applied to the line and the mast and hoped that the standing rigging was tight and secure and able to withstand the loads.

Todd looked up the mast and said to me, "Hey, it looks like the line is getting frayed at the top, must be from all the pressure." Not one minute later there was a giant SNAP and the boat flopped back upright, viciously, but thankfully she was floating!

"That wasn't the mast, was it??" I yelled.

"Nope, the spinnaker line just broke. We're good," Todd replied.

With that, she was in the open water, just barely out of the shallows and it felt great as there seemed to be no damage beyond the broken halyard which was easily replaced. The Wigger's boys gathered up the remains of the line from the water, tossed it over to us and bid us goodbye. I thanked them profusely and thought to myself that this is indeed an experience to try once. Once.

Todd and I spent the next two hours motoring westward to Whitby, all alone on the lake, on a beautiful and calm day. The engine passed the sea trial with flying colours and we were achieving over 8 knots on 2200 RPM as she hummed along nicely. Along the way I took the opportunity to ask Todd all the remaining questions I had about the boat. He had owned the boat for several years and had spent two of those in the Caribbean so knew the boat's systems inside and out and had upgraded many of those systems himself.

We arrived at the Port Whitby Marina and slowly and carefully navigated the boat into the harbour. At some points the depth came right up to the bottom of our keel so we were skimming mud but did manage to float through. As we approached our slip I could see Ana and the kids there as well as several other people who had lined up to help catch our lines. I've always preferred backing into a slip, but because I didn't know how this boat handled I was taking a bit of a chance. My first attempt failed so I motored her back out, turned around, and came in for another pass and that time I brought her in reasonably well and soon we were all tied up and SeaLight was safely docked in her new summer home.

After a short break we got the bosun's chair rigged up to ascent the mast and remove the incorrectly sized shroud. As I was preparing to climb the mast Todd looked again at the rigging and suggested we try adjusting the turnbuckles again. I  knew we had already tried this but agreed to give it one more go before taking the next painful step of removing it completely. I went up the mast, got to the first spreader, started adjusting it and voila, it worked! I have no idea why, but perhaps all the yanking and twisting and jerking of the mast during the unorthodox channel launch stretched the rigging into shape. I was elated and would have done a happy dance if I wasn't hanging off a thin rope 40 feet in the air with an adjustable wrench and screwdriver in my hand.

With that, the job was done, the boat was settled, and we finally had a chance to sit in the cockpit, relax, and imagine what adventures the rest of the season might bring.