Wed Aug 17: Update

Dear Readers (Rick here), I thought you'd like an update:

August 11-16 were spent with me icing and popping pain pills, and all of us trying to decide what to do, while also salvaging some of the trip that we had planned for William and Le.  It was a tiring few days. The temperatures were high and the marina in Montreal was crazy with the locals, all working together to make the last days of summer as noisy as possible.  I spent much of the time looking into a cloudy crystal ball, trying to decide what to do, and calling around to find a place (or several - one for each possible outcome) for us to hole up.

 

Trying to make the best of things, I'm thawing the chicken/icing (much to the horror of Le, who grew up in a restaurant kitchen and thinks this might not be up to health standards).

That's Will down there in the hold - following my instructions he took apart the water pump and we fixed a problem we have been having since 2019!!

On Tues, Aug 16th, I went back to the Montreal hospital for my orthopedic consult.  The doctor, fortunately, gave us some good news. He said that the break was clean (no shattering or slivering of bone) with just a 7 mm displacement of the broken ends. He felt that surgery was unnecessary (and risky), and that, with rest and care, in 4-6 weeks I would mend, with just a small bump as a souvenir.  So no need to travel back to Atlanta, which was great news.

We had decided, ahead of my apt, that if we didn't have to go back to Atlanta, we would use the kids' help to get into a secure, less expensive/noisy marina before they left.  I rushed back to the boat so we could leave at 2 pm to make the 3 pm pleasure-boat locking through the St. Lambert Lock.  I admit I was a bit of a frazzled mess worrying, but Melanie’s calm/irritated demeanor prevailed and we arrived at the lock with time to spare at 2:50 pm.  We waited for a large freighter to exit and then entered with Will and Le at the control lines.  We repeated the process one hour later at the St. Catherine lock and shortly found ourselves leaving the “Rive Sud” canal and entering Lac St. Louis, heading towards the Lord Reading Yacht Club that will be our home until we are ready to move on.  We would never have made it without Will & Le, and they got to (finally) experience boat life (all of it in 5 hours).

As usual, we drove for about 5 hours and ended up within spitting distance of where we started!

While 'Lord Reading' may sound a bit pretentious, the marina was anything but.  Since it's a club it is different from a commercially run marina.  There is no official check-in or dock staff and we tied up with help from our young deck hands, and a couple of boat owners who happened to be on the dock near our slip.  It was early evening by the time we arrived, and after such a long week we felt happy to know our next steps....and to be anywhere other than Montreal.  We made dinner and then some of us decided that  

9 pm was a perfectly acceptable time for bed….

This is a bit how I feel about having fallen and created such a mess.

The next day Will and Lee took an Uber to the airport, and we settled in to be bored for a few weeks.  I think, secretly, that we are hoping to be able to move on in 10 days....