Wed July 21: Burlington to Pt Au Roche (Deep Bay) mooring ball

 In which, look ma, we are way north! ...

First we need to respond to clever reader Dottie, who pointed out that we missed an important detail - you are RIGHT!  We forgot to mention that Rick was 're-crowned' (attributed to Dottie).  He got his crown all fixed on Monday... Because it's all about me, all the time, I forgot about that!!!

Anyway - it was a chore to get ourselves motivated to get off the Burlington dock.  Because....you guessed it - it was cloudy and rainy when we woke up.  Arrggg…wish we could send some of this rain out west to help with the fires.  It is hard to believe it is almost August. The high temperature today will reach only about 68 degrees.  Of course, if it were hotter we would be complaining about that. 

First stop was the pump-out dock.  Which requires a quick discussion of 'water', for you non-boaters.  We have fresh water (water pulled from our boat tanks that is double filtered) which is used for drinking, cooking and bathing. We have raw water (water we pull in from the body of water around us - salt or fresh) used to wash the anchor down).  We have grey water (the water that our shower and sink put out) which drains right into the body of water we are on. And we have black water (whatever goes into the toilet) which is stored in a vacuum sealed tank.  In theory a boater can release black water out into the body of water they are traveling on, once you are 3 miles off the coast.  We have never done that 'cause.....yuck. We ALWAYS put our 'black water' into the care of someone we trust, on a dock, with a long hose - and gloves.

 Lake Champlain has a very strict “no discharge” law.  Release of any black water is strictly prohibited.  Rick even had to disconnect the pipe that allows discharge to prove that we are in compliance  (in case the po-po boards our boat to check....which would make them the poo po-po...LOL).  I had to urgently be somewhere, anywhere, else during that piece of maintenance.  'Cause...YUCK.

Our destination today is Point Au Roche State Park in New York.   This will be about as far north as we go this year.  We are only about 17 road miles from the Canadian boarder!

The boarder!! - we are the little blue dot.

We are further north than Bangor!

We are further north than Toronto!

 

Yesterday it was reported that Canada would begin allowing Americans to cross the border, starting on August 9.  But looking at the calendar we have decided that doesn’t allow enough time to traverse the Canadian locks and return back to our over winter destination (Winter Harbor Marina in Brewerton NY). So, although we can almost see Canada from here, we will not make it there this year.  The 1 year boat trip will go into its 3rd year...

We picked up a mooring ball in the wonderfully quiet little Deep Bay in the Park.  It was still cloudy but the rain had stopped.  We did a few projects on the boat - nothing major, worked on a puzzle and made a dinner of maple grazed tofu and jasmine rice with an excellent kale salad (Rick wanted you to know that!).

It was forecast to drop to about 58 degrees during the night - I was excited to maybe use a blanket (it's the little things, people).  Rick was excited about possible meteors. The Perseid Meteor shower is happening now and he was hoping that, far away from city lights, we might see the show. The bright moon, however, had other plans.

Good - night, Moon.  Actually this seems like quite a party moon - it's super bright.