Sunday Monday Oct 19-20

Sunday October 19

We left Grape Island around 9 am. It’s getting harder to get moving because it’s so dark and cold in the morning. It was a pretty little island and it afforded enough protection from the wind that we didn’t swing too much all night.

The day however, was miserable, cold and rainy and the Bay of Quinte was very choppy. Not a pleasant run.  We ran into (not literally) a couple of fishing boats and one sailor screaming down the bay towards Belleville.  He was in a McGregor, not a real sailboat but he was going a lot faster than we were!

Once we passed under the bridge at Derseronto, we headed out towards the open lake...I ws not without some trepidation. The forecast was for a rough day Monday and settling down overnight with a ‘reasonable’ day Tuesday. That is to say, winds under 20 knots and waves under 2 meters. Think about that ...how high is 2 meters and would you want to be ploughing through it? Me, neither.

And the worst part was that once we hit the end of Prince Edward Point, there was no way to get a decent updated forecast. So we put ourselves into the tiny little bay at the end of the point and dropped the anchor. Of course it was dark by then so we did it be flashlight. I had made soup again, the old standby. There’s nothing like hot thick soup when you’re cold and tired. After we ate, we went out and re-set the anchors. We had swung around and grounded ourselves in 3 feet of water on a sandbank...can’t see them in the dark. Rick had to strip down to his underwear so he wouldn’t get his only pair of sweats and runners  wet. While we were doing this, a car came down the road to the point and three people got out with flashlights and walked along the shore. They were looking for something but I think really, they were just trying to figure out who the idiots were who were still boating at this time of year. And make sure we weren’t trying to steal the fishing tug that we didn’t know was there until the morning!

We also noticed that the sky was clear as a bell, and the 25 knots winds that had been forecasted never materialized. And because it was dark, naturally we went to sleep.

Both of us tossed and turned all night, probably worrying about what the morning would bring and if we had been smart we would have gotten up at 4 am and left the bay. But we didn’t get up to leave until 7:30 and it was a brutal crossing... lumpy and the 1 meter waves materialized earlier than predicted. It is 32 miles across the lake from the point to Oswego. So it took from 7:45 am to 5:15 pm. We were down to 2.5 knots[mph] at times although when the boat was rocking and tossing it felt like we were doing highway speeds!

There is a huge nuclear plant on the south shore of Lake Ontario that you can see from the Canadian shore. It is not a pretty site but it was our marker for the trip.

The winds changed about half way over so the water became even rougher with the changing wave direction so we were really glad to get to the shore.

We pulled into the Oswego marina and no-one was home. We took our passports and boat document and spent a half hour on the video phone with the Port Authority or Homeland Security or whoever was in charge and we finally got the approval for our cruising permit.

THEN, right next to the dock is a Best Western, so guess what...we are in a room with a hot shower, and a continental breakfast and free wi-fi and hot showers and a thermostat I can jack up as high as I want. The marina would have had a shower in a cold room and we would have been back in the cold boat and I can do that tomorrow but tonight I can sleep in normal pj’s ... not three layers, and I can drink as much tea as I want without staggering through the boat 15 times to pee!  

So that’s how I can post this tonight and tomorrow or the next day we will be looking for a phone that will give us texting and wi-fi hotspot access.  

So I’ve already had a shower but I might just have another one and jump into bed and watch TV! And sleeeeep. As long as I don’t fall out of the bed. We can’t seem to stop everything from rocking!

SO, talk to you later...