Day 9 - Of Wine & Fishes

Monday, July 9

This morning the bed broke. For a startled second I thought that Mister Hattie might have been under it but, thankfully, that wasn’t the case as the bed extension that I built a couple of years ago so that the double bed could be wider came crashing down; right on the spot where she likes to sleep.

Mister Hattie sleeping on a safer portion of the bed

Anyhoo… spent the morning at anchor fixing that and re-attached the rear hatch cover that had been off for re-varnishing purposes. During this time, Mister Cookie constructed a swell removable bug screen for the salon door. (Picture below) It even has vents at the bottom so the cats can come and go as they please with no bug intrusion. 

Mister Cookie's Screened Cat Gate

 

In the afternoon I fished again and caught a bunch of perch including one that was a foot long. The biggest perch I’ve ever seen. We considered eating them but, as we had pork chops in the cooler, I released them. Later I saw the big perch lunker eying me from the weeds. He had a tear of gratitude in his eye as he hovered there, accompanied by his wife and two small fry. At least I think he had a tear, it’s hard to tell with a fish.

Later we took the boat over to the winery for dinner with the dinghy in tow. I managed to run over my tow line reversing to anchor and so I had to dive under the hull to release the painter from the screw. (I’m deliberately using nautical terms here so you will actually learn something from this blog. You’ll have to look them up if you can’t figure them out.) Then, I washed my hair while I was down there so I’d be all spic for the dinner.

Dinner at the Waupoos Winery was underwhelming. I had over-cooked pork chops and Brooke had the duck-in-beets… um, yeah. Surprisingly, the wine was not that great considering we had their two best bets… the Red Rabbit and the Baco Noir (which came chilled…?) The best aspect of the dinner was looking out from our table in the gazebo and seeing the Mary Mary floating, nicely lit in the summer sun.

Anchored off Waupoos Winery

Very amusing return to the boat as Mister Huxley was waiting for us and evidently had been doing so for some time, her little arms hanging over the gunwale.

We decided to sleep where we were. The bugs down here in Waupoos are the worst I’ve seen in quite a while but thanks to Brooke’s screen we live in relative comfort. Until the next morning, that is, when we find thousands of dead shad flies littering the outside of the boat.

Day 8 - NW of Waupoos

Sunday, July 8

We got up early today (0730) and ate breakfast at the small café attached to the marina. The food was good and we felt great about heading out to our first Waupoos anchorage.

We had decided, since the winds were meant to be from the NE that we would go the short distance to Black Creek and anchor in the lee of the peninsula there. We managed to get in close to the nice looking tree-lined shore but the wind suddenly shifted to the SW so that was the end of that. Wind… what you gonna do?

A parade of swans and cygnets at Black Creek

We hauled anchor and headed around to the NW side of Waupoos Island itself and joined several other sail boats and one trawler in the bay there. (The trawler, incidentally, we recognize as being the Mainship owned by the woman who just a couple of weeks ago rear-ended me on the Lakeshore Blvd. in Toronto. Coincidence? I think not. We briefly consider running ourselves stern on to her bow. Just for old times sake. We give up the idea when we get close and hear the strains of Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl blasting from the salon. They obviously have enough problems.)

Mister Huxley doing sole inspection at Waupoos Bay

 I took the dinghy out and tried fishing the weed beds near the shore but with no luck. We have a calm night at anchor but there are thousands of bugs. This year has been really bad for that, apparently a result of the warm winter and dry spring.

Day 7 - Waupoos Island Area

Saturday, July 7, 2012

After a calm night at anchor again we head out, bound for Waupoos. After about two hours we pass the sight of the great stone cliff known locally as The Rock. It is immense and we take a short side trip off course to visit, drifting there under its towering presence. Eventually, we round Waupoos Island to take the advised course of entering the bay from the South.

The Rock

We float into the marina, sign in, get our slip assignment and, after a brief rest, break out the bicycles and cycle the mile or so to the Duke of Marysburg pub for beer and quiche. An older biker couple and a dad and his two sons out for some ‘quality’ time are our only company there. Further cycling up the windy and slightly hilly road brings us to a local pottery run by an aging English gypsy woman by the name of Gwynn. She is getting ready to sell out her property and head to New Brunswick to try her hand there. She has to be at least 75, brave soul. We wish her luck and buy two nicely crafted, handle-less wine cups with Gwynn’s thumb print dent where you are meant to cradle it with your own thumb.

Later, after launching the dinghy, we visit the Waupoos Estates Winery where they are preparing for a big wedding. We decide go eat there on Monday and climb back into the dinghy, escorted by the groom’s side of the wedding party, all dressed in kilts. They offer to help pushing us off, but the thought of them standing over us in their kilts makes us decide better of it. (Although I’m not sure Mister Cookie was in complete agreement with me.)

On the way back, the dinghy motor quits and I find myself having to row against the wind. It is hard work and all looks grim until the marina boys, who spotted us having problems, showed up in the work launch to tow us back into the marina. Bless them. We offer to compensate them for their trouble but they refuse and bolster, at least temporarily, our belief in the basic good nature of human-kind. It turns out that we were out of gas. We had been told when we bought the new motor that it came with a full tank of gas as a matter of course. Foolishly, I had believed this and didn’t check the tank before we left as this was the first time that we had used it. Silly Cappie…

The mighty dinghy - Huxley's Perch

Day 6 - Not Quite Waupoos

Friday, July 6, 2012

Early in the morning we haul the boat by hand around to the fuel dock and buy 400 liters at $1.35/L. This is a good price to date and it won’t be until later that we find there are a couple of places cheaper than this. At marinas you almost always pay more for fuel than the standard street price (which is about $1.26 right now).

We head back out into Long Reach and then Adolphus Reach with hope of making Waupoos Island today. As we sail along we pass a small three-masted sailing vessel manned by kids at a sailing camp. Some of the kids are high in the rigging adjusting sails and fooling around. Other kids scrub the decks and others still are mustered on the forecastle to witness punishment. In this case, 24 lashes for short-sheeting the mate’s bunk. This last event I am just imagining.

The cruel sailing vessel  Camp Happy

Unfortunately, the wind kicks up to a south-westerly with 10 knots and this means, as we round Long Point to head back east to Waupoos that we would be bouncing on the beam for the one and a half hour trip. We abandon the idea with memories still fresh in our minds of the trip to Nicholson. Instead we circle back to a nice anchorage that we know of in Prinyer Cove.

Things are calm there and we anchor in 12 feet of water and enjoy a leisurely post-afternoon rest. Plenty of time for Waupoos. I am proud that we made the right decision.

Day 5 - Pets & Pipers

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Feeling refreshed after a good night’s sleep we pay our five bucks and enter the Murray Canal, making for Picton. There we hope to find cheap fuel and a stopover on our way to Waupoos Island.

Unfortunately, Mister Huxley still seems to be in some discomfort so we phone ahead and book an appointment for her at the Picton Animal Hospital. After several hours of traveling up Long Reach, we get to Picton and tie up at the marina wall where we will spend the night. We take a taxi with Mister Huxley and arrive at the vet that has two doors; one for pets and one for farm animals. Briefly, I wonder which door we would use if Huxley was our pet cow. No time for that! (On the inside we find that the two doors enter into the same room but just on opposite sides of a large desk.) I am struck by a mental image of an old farmer with a pig filling in forms as I do for my cat.

Huxley is examined and it is decided after poking and prodding and an expensive blood test that she has a sprained leg. She is prescribed a sort of liquid, feline ibuprofen that we will administer orally. When we get her back to the boat she is given a double dose and she seems to react well.

It is damned hot but we decide to bicycle into town for supplies. Mister Cookie’s folding clown bike is doing well by her and we get many stares as we make our way down the steamy main street.

Brooke & her fabulous folding bicycle

Upon returning to the boat we are greeted by the sight of a large cruiser that has somehow managed to dock in the small space behind us. We find the owners (with their two dogs) are fellow Loopers and are planning to finish a circuit in a couple of years. The dogs ignore Mister Huxley as she stares down on them with disdain.

Mister Huxley turns her back on the frolicking hounds

A meal of beef tenders and wine at the picnic table is taken and then a couple of hours later the Loopers return from a foray into town. With them they have members of the local bag-pipe squadron in tow and we sit for a while outside chatting about bag-piping and local gossip. I find it ironic that one of the major shared beefs of the bag-pipe squadron is the proliferation of wind turbines. It would seem to me anything to do with wind would delight a bag-piper, but I stand corrected. 

Enraged bag-piper about to lose it at the sight of a wind-turbine

We are driven inside by mosquitoes and the creeping suspicion that we may have said the wrong things re: the wind.

Day 4 - Recovery

Wed. July 4, 2012

We have slept for a few hours and awake somewhat refreshed but groggy. We decide  to hang out on the wall of the Murray Canal and try to recuperate from both our physical woes and our spiritual hammering. 

Twilight on the Murray Canal

It’s hard to describe the feeling that you get when you are up against uncontrollable nature and it is, to some degree, your fault that you didn’t anticipate the difficulty. It is kind of like a depression. Also, the guilt you feel from having watched the cats, who have absolutely no idea why this happening, try to make do.

I have decided to make one of our favourite dishes, Shrimp Sambuca, tonight to try to take the edge off. It is still windy but it is supposedly going to die down by nightfall.

Mister Huxley, who much enjoyed running around outside on the wall the last time we were by here, jumps up on to the cement abutment and hurts her back legs when she misses the leap. She is noticeably troubled by it later and we are worried.

Mister Huxley organizing the ships plants

We have a bit more sleep in the afternoon and we eat at a table set up on the wall. Huxley seems okay, but a bit sore. The evening is as calm as they predicted and it is a good night for us but eventually the bugs drive us inside. But not before I compose a melody played on the iron railings on the wall. Video to follow.

Recuperation

 We fall into another dead sleep.

                                                                                          

Day 3 - The Long Night

Tues. July 3, 2012

We decided, after we left Newcastle at 0830 hrs, not to put in at Cobourg (a marina that we have become all too familiar with over the years and although it is nice, we have sort of had enough of it) and instead try to achieve our goal of visiting the Waupoos Island area by taking the outside route around Point Petre. This would be a long haul in one go, so we decide that we will break the trip into two. As the wind is from the east and as the rarity of this direction allows for a relatively protected trip we decide to anchor out at Nicholson Island. This partly owing to the fact that it was off Nicholson that we first hit Canada when we brought the boat up from Tampa and a sort of romantic attachment was formed.

Nicholson has proven problematic in the past when we’ve tried to go there and the conditions have to be just right to stay put, but the prediction is for the easterly winds, shifting to west by noon Wednesday.

We rode along quite nicely, arriving at Nicholson Island in about four hours dropping the anchor 50 feet off the shore in 18’ of water. When we let the anchor go it plummeted to the bottom but instead of stopping after 18 feet of it was in the water, the heavy chain rode (that we had decided upon instead of the alternate rope one) all spent out and in a minute we had a hundred feet of chain in the water. Mister Cookie thought that perhaps we had dropped the anchor into a crevice in the rock. This later turned out not to be true and I think that the weight of the 18 feet of chain pulled the rest in because of the relatively small amount of free-board it had to surmount. Physics, I guess. I have sent a letter to Mister Stephen Hawking in the hope that he might be able to confirm my theory.

So far, no response…

Cappie foot at Nicholson Island

 The wind died and the water became tranquil and we ate in the glow of a beautiful sunset. “Red sky at night…” I thought to myself and felt secure. This, as you might guess, was a mistake and is another reason why old wives are not to be believed nor trusted.

Sunset at Nicholson Island

At around 8:30 and shortly before dark, we realized that the wind was shifting to the west. The wind predicted for noon the next day was over 12 hrs early. Damn. Just as it got dark we realized we were in trouble. A plan to move around to the eastern tip of the island is hastily abandoned as the depths there are problematic, particularly in the dark.

Then the boat begins to buck.

I know we are in for a long night and suggest that we stand two hour watches, spelling each other off, so that we can monitor the anchoring throughout the night. I take the first watch at 2300 hrs with the thought in mind to be relieved at 0100 hrs on Wednesday. But as the time goes by I can’t stand the thought of waking Brooke up, so I let her sleep on. By 0330 I am overcome with sea-sickness and despite not losing it completely, need to lie down for a bit. Mister Brooke comes up and sits watch.

By 0500 hrs the cats are beginning to freak and Mister Huxley vomits spit and hair-balls. If I had hair-balls I would be tossing them too.

At 0530 hrs we can’t take any more and abandon all hope of riding it out until we can head around the point. Instead we are going to head for the reasonably safe harbour of Presqu’lle Bay, about an hour and a half away.

We (I should say, Mister Brooke, weighs the anchor) and we happily discover that it isn’t lodged in a crevice. But it takes a lot of effort on her part to bring in the long chain as I try to keep the boat headed into the wind. Eventually it does come in and we head into 25km/hr headwinds and 3-4 foot waves. We tack towards the mainland, trying to keep her bow into the swell and it is a rough ride but at least we’re doing something and not just sitting there being buffeted. Upon reaching a point about a mile off the mainland, I bring her about so the waves are from the stern and the ride from there to Presqu’lle Bay is tolerable.

We enter the tricky harbour (tricky because of depth issues) and negotiate over to the entrance to the Murray Canal. Tying off at our old free dockage on the cement wall that used to be the main entrance to the canal we eat pancakes, drink bourbon whiskey and, at 0900 hrs, drop into bed.

At rest at the Murray Canal

Day 2 - Newcastle

Monday July 2, 2012

Today was relatively uneventful as we were forced to stay in Newcastle. Brooke had to return to Toronto via the GO Train in order to pick up our truck from the marina and drive it to her parent’s place in Port Hope. The truck has the set and props in it that we will need at the end of the month for her shows in Blyth and we don’t know exactly where the boat will be at that time.

Brooke’s parents picked her up at 1115 and I spent the day putting up pictures, doing a hand laundry of the bedding and attaching the fuel measuring stick to the cabin wall. It’s excitement like this that makes the whole trip worthwhile. As a result the vodka supply is dwindling.

Newcastle Charter Fisher-people

She returned around 1800 with her parents and I fed them all hamburgers until they had to leave. Once Brad & Mary had gone we hung about and talked about tomorrow’s plan. The choice is to go to Cobourg which would be very boring as we have been there more often than we’d like or to anchor out near Nicholson Island near Prince Edward County. It would be our first anchorage of the trip. This would obviously be preferable but the wind is a big factor there and the only comfortable direction for it would be from the east. I guess we’ll wait until the weather forecast for tomorrow becomes more reliable before we make that decision.

We watched some of the movie Humoresque with Joan Crawford and John Garfield on the ship’s screen until the plot put us to sleep. Now that the truck is safely in the hands of the Johnson’s, we can finally feel like the trip is in our hands. 

Joan & John

The real journey starts tomorrow.

Day 1 - Canada Day Departure

Sunday July 1, 2012

Canada Day

Today is momentous. Not just for the country in which we live but for we two who today embark on what, for us, is a great journey. We will leave today from the Outer Harbour Marina in Toronto aboard the Mary Mary and, when all is said and done, some time from now, we’ll be in Caribbean waters; all this by way of the Trent Canal, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.

I must admit to being a little antsy this morning and the excitement of our departure has a certain edgy tint to it. The weeks (months, more like) of preparation and organization are now behind us and the path ahead, although planned, unsure. Have we put everything together properly? What have we forgotten?

To be sure, it’s not like we’re Shackleton preparing the Endeavour for the Antarctic, but like any degree of a showdown with the unknown, with your fate in the hands of certain other gods, there is a nagging suspicion that things will happen you couldn’t possibly account for in your planning. At least I hope that’s the case. Why do it at all if everything were predictable? Still as I walked down the dock towards the boat that last time, I was a little overwhelmed by the vastness of it all.

The wind that the weather office had been predicting to be light today seems gustier than expected and was blowing about 8 knots. The last thing we wanted for the first leg would be choppy waters; especially with the new cat, Mister Hattie, on her first lengthy voyage. (Note: the cats have had ‘Mister’ affixed to their names as they are the ensigns on board. I doubt whether either of them will rise above this station however as they have no opposable thumbs.)

We motored out of the harbour at 0820 with a light wind from the NW and when we rounded Gibraltar Point and headed east towards Newcastle, the off-shore wind was kicking up nothing in the way of chop and we realized, with considerable relief, that we were in for a smooth ride. It would be about 5 hours to our port at 8.5 knots and 1500 rpm.

The conditions were amazing and Mister Huxley (first amongst ships cats) leaped up to the bridge to take her usual position on the deck chair there. Even Mister Hattie, the shy one, came out for a look. We had our first onboard breakfast sandwiches in a long time and enjoyed a return to that comfortable tradition of getting underway prior to the first meal of the day.

We decided to not do our usual one hour on/one hour off watch switch protocol so that Brooke could finish up some curtain making she had been doing to get that chore behind us. Replacing all the curtains on the interior of the main salon and stateroom was a long task  and Brooke has motored through it to be close now to finishing it up.

Newcastle Marina

We pulled into the Port of Newcastle Marina at 1315 hrs and took up residence at a dinky 15’ slip on the north side. The Mary Mary is 36’ long so getting in and out of the boat was a bit of a chore as we couldn’t use the railing gates.

Tiny Finger Pier

The Newcastle Marina is small and the docks and finger piers are in disrepair. Every now and then a voice comes over loudspeakers announcing upcoming marina events such as ‘Christmas in July’. “Decorate your boats for Christmas and maybe win a prize” the shrill, female voice booms out at us. We’ll be gone the day after tomorrow, so that will have to wait. For like… ever. Their seems to be a lot of charter fishing boats and we are surprised to learn that they are almost all skippered by francophone’s. Bit of a mystery there.

Tomorrow, unfortunately, Brooke has to return to Toronto to pick up our truck from the marina and drive it to her parents house in Port Hope. The set for her play that she will be leaving to do in August is in the truck, ready to drive to Blythe, Ontario at the end of the month.

We settle in for the afternoon and have a dinner of pork ribs and baked potato. The ribs were kept cold in the cooler that Brooke constructed in a boat locker out of R5 insulation and plastic lining. Clever girl.

Mister Cookie's Cooler

The marina put on a fairly good fire-works display in the evening which seemed to be a fitting way to end our first day of the journey. We should have left it at that but decided to try the apple pie offered by the marina restaurant. Oh well, it’s still pretty exciting and once we got the taste of the pie out of mouths it was all good.

So far, no pirates.

End of Day 1.