I decided I wouldn't get out of bed unless someone gave me a very good reason, since Kingston isn't doing it for me at this point. Then Rick said the magic words 'tea and cruller' and I was up like a rabbit! (Rick here: Melanie went shopping yesterday and came home with a whole box of crullers! I shouldn’t let her go to bakeries by herself, although I will say that I reap the benefits, and they are good with coffee). (Mel here: that's me 'making breakfast'. You do you and I'll ..... er ... buy pastries)
Then it was a bunch of wait, wait, wait - until suddenly the fixed prop appeared, we zoomed over to get a pumpout and fuel (the diesel pump had been broken and the repairman was just finishing up when we pulled up to the pump) and then we were FREEEEEEEEEE. Thank God Almighty, we were free at last ...
Except we had to W-A-I-T for the causeway bridge,
but THEN we headed out into open water. More open water than we have seen in a few weeks.
As we were leaving Kingston we were talking about how fun it was that everywhere in Canada we were special because we had come from FL. Just then the boat Rascal went by us, headed to Kingston. And we immediately felt less famous because everyone on the water has heard about this boat - it’s from New Zealand! Florida is small potatoes in comparison.
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| Kingston has several remaining Martello Towers - small defensive forts that were built across the British Empire in the 19th century. |
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| Here you can see Fort Henry, on the grounds of the Royal Military College of Canada. As well as a Martello Tower...so, technically, it's TWO forts IN ONE! I'm going to count it as two for my record book. |
Once out into wider water we ran the prop check on the loaner prop, which we now own. (Rick decided we should have a backup, and Prop Man gave us an excellent price.) The check involved running at full throttle blah blah blah in gear and out of it blah blah. Even Rick wasn't sure of the details. We just knew we were really nervous to run at 3500 RPMs, since we have never gone above 2600. But we lived to tell the (boring) tale, and Rick sent the results to Prop Man so that he can interpret them for us
Once that terrifying thing was over we could pay attention to the fact that we were back in the Thousand Island National Park (Pop Quiz: how many islands are ACTUALLY here??). It was a day for interesting water-craft:
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| Our friends call houseboats 'toasters'. |
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| Ye olde paddle boat tour boat. Oh my, it seems a long time ago that we were on a tour boat in Thousand Islands! |
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| Face-off with the Kingston Ferry. Rick is so confident he's not even looking in that direction! (The last time he wasn't looking we ran into a rock.....oh sorry, too soon??) |
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| Trimaran. |
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| The lighting is bad, but the sails really are black - they are the carbon fiber that is all the rage these days. It makes a sailboat look really menacing, which is a difficult achievement as they look lighthearted by their very nature. |
It was mid afternoon when we got to Endymion
Island where we used our Canada Parks Pass to pick up a mooring ball at
the park-run island. The water in this area is deep, but also filled with many rock outcropping and small
islands that stick up just to water level, and we are gun shy about
rocks-so our eyes were practically bleeding from watching the
water/charts by the time we tied up. It was absolutely lovely, peaceful and empty. It would have been a great swimming area, but the temp had dropped and we were in long pants and fleece jackets!
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