Sat July 15: Carleton Island anchorage to Treasure Island Marina

Ow-ow-ow… My little T-rex arms are SO sore from stupid tiny weights. 🙄

Predictably it was a Bug Massacre on deck in the morning.  Inside we have taken to sucking bugs up with the dust buster.  So satisfying-feels like vengeance!  The only thing better would be to suck up a spider and set it loose on the trapped bugs.  That’s my dark side coming out…

All the anchor gear worked as hoped-look at what a good little boat she was, staying inside the circle all night!

It was a gorgeous day!  We had been very concerned about smoke from the Canadian fires, but so far so good …. (Can’t believe I said that out loud)

One of the houses around the edge of our little anchorage.  What a view they must have!

Cruising further down the St. Lawrence River it was fun to be in familiar territory. We have lots of the unknown ahead… In the vicinity of Clayton, NY we noticed a large number of small and mid-size boats out and about. We thought it was just a busy summer day on the water. All of a sudden there was a huge roar of motors starting, and gigantic plumes of water shot up into the air as speed boats came rocketing down the waterway. It turned out we had stumbled upon a boat race, and all the other boats were out to watch! It was an amazing display of aquatic horsepower (and fossil fuel burning). We did a quick bit of research and found out we were watching the 1000 Island Poker Run - which is a fundraising boat race where you go to 7 different locations and pick a playing card. At the end of the race the boat that shows up first, and has the best poker hand, is the winner. We enjoy the constant surprises the trip brings us.  Most of them, anyway…

Rick was, again, super excited to cross the border and let his Canadian flag fly!

Soon we were just east of Kingston ON and easing through the NARROW/SHALLOW entrance to the Treasure Island Marina, where our friends Michael & Yvonne had arranged for us to stay (it’s the home marina to Yankee Zulu, their boat).  It was so fun to see him on the dock, ready to get us settled in!

Later he picked us up in his Tesla to go grocery shopping.  I am car-ignorant and thought the whole Tesla-fuss a head scratcher.  Imagine my surprise to get into one and discover there is NO DASHBOARD.  Just a big computer screen that does everything. It was so disorienting…

I bet the Jetsons never had a car like this. (I GET this pop culture reference because I worked for Turner, who owned Hanna-Barbera)

Around 4pm we walked over to Michael and Yvonne’s house.  Newly built, it instantly gave us serious house envy.  I had to run around cooing over every detail!  After a nice swim (their house overlooks the waterway) they treated us to a warm BIG shower, washer/dryer, a wonderful dinner-and wet kisses from furry family member, Max.  We talked long into the night, making plans to go skiing from their Mt Tremblant cabin, biking in Vietnam, etc…

But first we must finish this adventure!  Goodnight XO

PS:

Yvonne’s party napkins - Yes!

Fri July 14: Oswego to Carleton Island S Bay anchorage

It was like Wild Kingdom on deck this morning.  (Having NOT HAD A TV while growing up I have to rely on Rick for this kind of cutting-edge pop culture reference) Many insect species represented + a neon green caterpillar.  There was a pair of beetles either having sex, or eating each other-as with humans it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference… We cast off ASAP, hoping our whipping 8mph speed would blow them all off the boat.

What a difference a day makes-you can see why it was an excellent call to wait:

Lake Ontario yesterday

Lake Ontario today

We cleared Oswego Lock 8, and onto Lake Ontario we went! We have spent SO. MUCH. TIME. in NY….and it’s been grand. But we hope this little lighthouse is the last we see of it, this year at any rate.

I’m curious to see the routing planned for this year.  I plotted everything down to Alabama (winter stop) in Jan, but Rick has been tinkering with it ever since, so I have no idea where we are going day-to-day. Oh-this just in: destination Duck Island anchorage.

On the rest of the Great Lakes we will skirt the edges, but we go across Lake Ontario. This is in violation of my promise to my mom not to loose sight of land.  I’m hoping the fact that we can see the NY Nine Mile Nuclear Power Station, from anywhere on the lake, will count.

The lake was smooth and we had a gentle breeze, so not too hot.  Part way to Duck Island Rick realized that our Canadian health insurance doesn’t kick in until tomorrow-so Plan B, free wall in Cape Vincent, went into effect.

Scratch that-no room in Cape Vincent.  To be fair, there is only room for three boats.  So Plan C was in effect-find an anchorage. We found a lovely one in a small cove off Carleton Island.  We were the only boat, and it was calm and cool.  The dr called to remind me I have osteopenia  and need to do weight bearing exercise (I like cardio better) so I reluctantly lifted my baby weights (3lbs !) while Rick cleaned the boat (clever shirking on my part-I disguise it as self-care).

Then I bravely jumped in the clear green water.  No really, I did!  Ask Betty Mom-she was on the phone with Rick and heard me shriek at the cold!! I did a 30-min swim while Rick, also in the water, cleaned the boat.  Of course he did.  He did get to relax later, tho.

All anchor gear worked as hoped, and it was a perfect evening…. 💤 

Thurs July 13: Fulton to Oswego free lock wall

I would very much like to report we slept like babies, but that was just Rick.  I don't like being on the wall above a dam, in a public space, where anyone can come along and release the lines, or steal the bikes.  Not that this has ever happened to us, but try telling that to my brain in the wee hours.  I was jumpy about every little noise.  As my friend, Kim, says:  'my brain isn't my friend in the middle of the night'.

It may take a couple of days before we start having:

 

We spent the morning locking through to Oswego city with two other big, but very polite boats.  Manners are definitely an important quality in a captain, since we have to all get along in very small spaces with heavy equipment .  Turns out both captains were from Georgia.  That’s another reason to be kind-you never know who you will run into later in life!

Capt Rick is so polite he apologizes to his balls when they get scraped on the lock wall…

We planned to cross the lake today (in fact we hoped to be anchored on said lake and see the predicted Northern Lights) but Mr Weather was a ‘hard no’ on that, with a major storm coming through late afternoon.  I may ignore him in many areas of life (most? all?) but weather is not one of those areas. (In fact, I used to call him in S. America to ask him about local Atlanta weather)…

Since it was a beautiful day when we arrived, we got our steps in.  It was fun to be back in a town we had explored before; there was no need to rush around.  We went out to look at the lake-yup, whitecaps.  Yuk!

We said hello to a familiar fort!  We learned all about it last time around, but only one of us retained that info.  In my defense, I need that brain space for random song lyrics that pop up when they are not at all needed.

Wandering around one of the marinas, we were reminded that bananas can be considered bad luck aboard a boat.  I wonder if we had bananas along when the Rock Incident occurred…

Around 3pm the storm blew in, and it was a doozy. Rain blew sideways and wind rocked the boat, while I taught my English lesson.  I was so happy we were cozy, and tight to the wall.  Thank you, Mr. Weather.

Good night!

PS:  Welcome, Washington friend Lisa.  Don't you have anything better to do??!

PPS:  Just finished the audio version of Mary Laura Philpott’s book, Bomb Shelter. Her essays just have the most ‘uncanny ability to articulate feelings you just can’t quite put your finger on’.  And she considers herself ‘an anxious optimist’, which I can so relate to.

Wed July 12: Winter Harbor Marina to Fulton NY free lock wall

It's been a good day, folks!

I got to SLEEP IN a bit, my fav activity, since we were waiting for the missing link (hose) to be delivered. To kill some time I went for a run/walk on the local rural road.  I'm sure I looked like a loon, as I kept leaping away from long grass that stuck out into the road, like a cobra was hiding in it.  I have a childhood horror of ticks, and it's tick season here in NY. Deet is one of the few chemicals I will willingly slather myself with...

Just about the time I finished laundry the part showed up and there was general mayhem and chaos on the boat as the finishing touches were ..... er, finished.  Right about then I had my usual panic attack: ACK - I don't remember EVER having been on a boat, anything about boats, and certainly not how to help operate 24,000 lbs of boat. After I breathed into a paper bag for a bit we cast off and ......  went 10 feet over to the fuel dock.  I thought that was maybe enough for one day, but Rick persevered and off we went.

Here we are at the fuel dock, using up the kids' leftover college money-they can pay for graduate school themselves, dang-it.  The good news is that we are super economical (there's the plus side to going to slowly that joggers pass you by) and will only fill up 3-4 times this year.

The route for the first bit of the journey:

North on the Oswego Canal, cross Lake Ontario with one night anchored out and arrive near Kingston where our Canadian friends have a house. 

We're so gun-shy from the Great & Terrible Propeller Incident of 2022 that we are treating the boat like a Faberge Egg. Not only does she have new, shiny running gear, they also patched up the two big dings in the bow (one was there when we bought her, just to be clear) and put new bottom paint on (good to have that done before we arrive back at salt-water).  I was so nervous for our first lock I about had a nervy-spaz, and that was without the three other boats (two small, one large like us) that showed up to lock through with us.  Most of last year we were alone in every lock.  I miss those days already, and it's only been 1 day.

It went just fine... In fact we ended up caravaning with the big boat to Fulton, where we docked on a lock wall for the night.  We had hoped to get to Oswego, but the locks closed at 5pm and it was what it was.  Ironically, Fulton is where we had dinner with friends on Tues night.  It took us 25 mins by car to drive there from Winter Harbor, and 4 hours by boat!  Anyway, we were able to tell the guys on the other boat where to go for dinner, like we knew everything about every town in this part of NY.

Buddy boat in the distance, plus a view of my feet for Betty Mom!

Here's something to worry - if all the writers and actors go on strike, WHAT WILL WE DO AT NIGHT????? We've finished the series Deadloch....

Goodnight

PS:

Thanks for the comments, btw - kimmiemcd, you're on FIRE! Surely you have better things to do than to scare me about insurance...

Mon July 10 & Tues July 11: Sitting at Winter Harbor

GUESS what we’re doing?!

If you guessed ‘boating’ you would be WRONG.  If you guessed ‘sitting on a boat waiting for a part to come in while spending money’ you win Special Blog Prize Of The Week…. 

On the plus side: the boat passed her sea trial with flying colors, some long-ago friends showed up on their boat “Inconseavable” (best boat name ever, if you are a Princess Bride fan), and it’s 65 degrees and I had to put on a sweater! 

ALSO, and this is the BIG one-William accidentally got himself a JOB as a Medical Assistant in the Primary Care Physicians of Atlanta practice! We are so proud of him - how cute is he in his scrubs with stethoscope!!!  Guess what brand his scrubs are …. (Don’t read ahead without guessing)

Scrub brand, I’m not making this up, Grey’s Anatomy Scrubs!

On the minus side: you know how you forget the trauma of childbirth so that you then are silly enough to do it again?  Well, I’m like that with the boat.  I romanticize and look forward to it, and then I’m smacked hard in the face each time by the cleaning and prep required to set up a second home on the water. And I’m only doing about 10% of it.  I even begged off Mon morning so I could teach my English class.  Rick is like a crazy person, rushing about etc... Sadly, we have plenty of time to clean because the boatyard forgot to order a critical hose blah blah something or other, and we have to wait for it to be delivered, on Wed.  Depending on what time it comes we may get away then, we may not...  

If Rick doesn't implode from waiting, he may need a pacemaker once he sees the bill that's going to come in.  Perhaps this is a good time to revisit the whole we-hit-a-rock-at-the-end-of-last-year fandango.  Go ahead and re-read that part....I'll wait.  So we had the boat hauled out at the time, and got a new propeller.  Fast forward to later that fall when they hauled the boat out for storage here at Winter Harbor.  Once close attention was paid to the critical 'running gear' (keel, propeller, shaft, motor ) it became clear that the ENTIRE THING had been knocked out of alignment and would have to be rebuilt. Rough estimate?  $44,000 dollars....  I was out of town, thank you baby Jesus, but Rick lost a whole night of sleep trying to figure out how to sell a kidney to pay for the repairs.  In the morning he called insurance, and they are paying THE WHOLE THING!!  How incredible is that - all these years we have paid insurance for all these things, and this ONE TIME we finally get out of it more than we put in!! ALSO - how great was it that I was out of town and only heard about this once it was solved....

Anyway - we will be sitting here, cleaning, until Wed at least.  And, let me assure you, it did not stay 65 degrees....and I did not get to keep wearing a sweater....  Also, $300 for groceries at Walmart was only 5 bags worth 😤 Pray for us.

Here is our sweet boat - chomping at the bit to get going.

 

We are not alone, though.  We had docktails with Dana/Mike from Journey, and the Inconseavable people, as well as two new friends, Mon night.  Tues night we drove to Fulton to have dinner with our friends Alison/Skip who we met two years ago. And Rick got to see his friends at Ace Hardware 3 times!  So mostly we are feeling lucky:

If we don’t leave Wed, tho, we might have to practice:

Watching the sun go down on Winter Harbor - hopefully for the LAST TIME!!

Good night, dear faithful 3 readers!

Wed July 5 - Sun July 9: Pre-Boat Adventures!

Off we go!  We are a bit delayed as the maintenance on Blue Horizon isn’t quite finished (of course it isn't - they have only had the boat SINCE OCT). So our goal is to be in Brewerton, NY by July 10. Plenty of time to have some adventures along the way!

First stop, Damascus, VA and the Virginia Creeper Trail. The drive was easy and we arrived at our Damascus B&B at about 5 pm.   The B&B was the embodiment of Faded Glory-a beautiful old mansion with its better days firmly in the past (sadly that was also true of its owners) ...  It was full of antiques but was a bit frayed around the edges, with some dust that may date from the Civil War (sorry, The Late Great Unpleasantness), but we slept well, and we aren't picky, (plus the price was right) so .... 

The next morning we rented bikes and took a van shuttle to the top of White Mtn, where the Virginia Creeper Trail begins.  This is a wonderful rail-to-trail bike path. After the shuttle ride to the top of the mountain we started the 17-mile downhill trek back to Damascus.  It was a fun and easy ride down the gently sloping hill and we enjoyed it. I thought we might get a BIT more exercise, but not so much so that I was willing to turn around and ride UP the trail for a few miles!

Rhododendron in glorious bloom!

We rode past Christmas Tree Farms - baby trees!

After our bike ride we left Damascus and continued our northward into Pennsylvania Dutch country. July 7 was Rick's birthday, so I forced him to go to the Hershey’s Chocolate Factory.  Hersheys has created a theme park much like a Disney Park, as well as a complex with a Sports arena, a concert venue and a huge store with 'activities'.  Theme parks make our blood run cold, but we braved the store and tried the Hersheys Experience ride, where you move through an explanation of how the factory makes chocolate. Singing cows were involved, and I just know that's exactly what Rick wanted for his birthday!

Rick loves Reece's Peanut Butter cups, so I made sure he got to cuddle up to Reece.

Picture of me for Betty Mom. Could my shorts BE more baggy??!

After the Hersheys fun I promised Rick something a bit more to his liking for his birthday.  Intercourse!!  Pennsylvania, that is.  He might have been a bit let down - but AMISH PEOPLE!!

After Intercourse we headed to Lancaster and went to the Central Market for lunch.  This is an Amish/Mennonite area so many of the market booths were run by Amish people.  We marveled at their other-worldly-ness but ultimately we wanted to see “free range Amish”.  What are these people like in their native state?  We looked for the Amish theme park or 'viewing area', but didn’t find it…. We will have to re-watch the Witness movie with Harrison Ford and actors playing Amish people.

After lunch we drove through Lititz (we were told that it is the prettiest Amish town - there were some lovely farms), and then continued our drive northward, stopping in the Catskills Mts to spend the night in Roscoe, NY. Roscoe is the flyfishing capital of the US - Dry flyfishing was invented here so I tried to get Rick to take a half-day fishing trip for his birthday, but I couldn't get any traction. It seems likely that meeting Reece was such a life-altering moment that he didn't need more birthday experiences...

 

It rained off and on as we drove through the Pocanos into the Catskills - both pretty but not as nice as the Adirondack’s!  Of course, we saw those fully draped in fall colors so no mountains will ever be as pretty.  The highlights of Roscoe were fried French Toast and the Huggins Lake Trail.  

July 9th we heard that Winter Harbor wouldn't have the boat in the water until Monday, so we took some time to detour to Ithaca NY and have lunch at Moosewood with my cousin, Lynn.  We so love both Moosewood AND cousin Lynn!!

We arrived by 4pm, to discover Brewerton in the midst of a deluge.  And the boat storage warehouse was locked so Rick couldn't see the boat, which made him practically implode.  To take our minds off of that, our friends Dana and Mike, on Journey, had us over for dinner.  They delayed their departure by a day so that we could see each other.  And a happy chat-fest was had by all!

Monday will bring the sea trial to be sure Blue Horizon floats (always a good thing in a boat), and many other worries, I'm sure.  But we went to bed cheerful and content.  We are finally on the cusp of this year's adventures!

Mon June 5: Boating Season 2023 commences!

 Hello Dear Readers!  Not long now.....you can tell the boating season is right around the corner by the fact that Rick has had to order many, MANY things on Amazon/West Marine that are boat-related.  At least he says they are.... Not sure we really need a SECOND solar panel - but, WHATEVER...

Here is the basic overview of July-Nov this year!  It's a lot of ground to cover, given that we spent 4 years coming up the east side. 

We are starting late because the big commercial locks below Chicago are closed for maintenance until  Oct 1.  Our winter storage isn't cheap, but it's not $3.00-$7.00/foot/night (we are 40', in case you have forgotten) like it would be sitting around and waiting in a Chicago Marina. So we will dawdle along the Trent Severn Canadian Canal, Georgian Bay (forget 1,000 island - it's 10,000 islands there!), North Chanel to Mackinaw Island.  Then stick our noses in Lake Superior and come cautiously down Lake Michigan (it's unpredictable in the fall).  After spending a week visiting Chicago (CLAIRE!!!!), we will take the Illinois River to the Mississippi.  At Cairo (Cay-row) we take a sharp left to get off the MI as soon as humanly possible (scary giant barge traffic), get on the Ohio River and then drop into the TN River Valley system - the TenTom Bigway.  We will leave Blue Horizon at Dempolois in AL for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  She will have her bottom painted in preparation for moving, once again, into sea water. In 2024 the plan is to bring her around FL, perhaps visit the Bahamas, and then sell her.  Bittersweet, but I think we are both ready to do other things.

There are some moving parts this year (aren't there always) - there will be a lot of boat traffic waiting for those Chicago locks, so we need to make sure we have marina space, but at the same time we can't count on certain days due to weather on Lake Michigan.  The weather inconveniently refuses to be predictable. So we are going to be guessing on marina dates. Thank goodness we are made of money (NOT)...  

The route south after Chicago may be a bit grueling.  We even debated not doing it - but... 'in for a penny in for a $1000', so away we go.

Thanks for joining us on the adventure - anchors aweigh!!