This day started early, 02:00 we were woken up by high winds and a rocking boat....not as bad as it could have been as we were tucked close enough behind Treasure Island. I checked the hand-held GPS about 40 times over the next couple hours to see if we were dragging. Our new 73lbs Rocna anchor was a great purchase, and the 80ft of 3/8 chain I laid out didn't hurt...we didn't drag an inch. I slept in the cockpit, to keep watch and jump into action at a moments notice, until sunrise; one last check and I went back to our comfortable bed until 08:00 when Doug called me to say we could come pickup our package now instead of 09:15 as planned. We jumped at it so we could get on our way to the 1000 Islands...pulled up the dinghy and lowered the Mercury 9.9 outboard in place from the stern rail where she resides most of the time, sported our life jackets and poked out into the larger waves coming from around the island right on our nose...no Chiropractor needed this week.....but a massage would be nice...not a comfortable ride in a dinghy. Thirty minutes later, package in hand and back at Boomdeyada we prepared to get underway; checked weather, charts and took 10 minutes to lift the anchor due to the amount of weeds that had entangled our chain and anchor.
The Bateau Channel looks a lot narrower on the charts than it actually was...we used the auto-helm to navigate most of the way making adjustments from the instrument screen. We had to pass two cable ferry's...these ferry's use a cable to cross the watery expanse, so you wonder how close do you get to them before the cable is lower than 6ft under the water? We weren't taking chances and waited until he was all the way to other side, reduced speed and crossed our fingers. The second cable ferry marked our entrance into The Admiralities or the best part areas of the 1000 Islands....After a brief rain, we made our approach through a narrow channel. We use our chart plotter, paper charts, Ports book (a very handy publication with aerial photos, layman instruction and facilities at each port) and my new best toy a handheld Garmin GPS (very accurate) for navigating around these parts (and determining if we're dragging our anchor)...running aground here would probably not end well with 33,000lbs of fibreglass hitting rock at 4-5knots.
The majority of the 1000 Islands are quite close to each other, so with our early start we were anchored by noon just west of Lindsay Island and decided to explore The Admiralities (a section of the 1000 Islands) with our dinghy...and not have to remove 20lbs of weeds from our anchor chain.
There is a term 'Anchor Dance' which refers to watching other boats come into anchor each afternoon....some are quite humourous and some you just shake your head that they own this expensive vessel and know very little about securing it...the kicker is they probably sleep more soundly than I do. :) Well there were three boats from RCYC (for those that don't know that acronym - the Royal Canadian Yacht Club in Toronto is where the wealthy people keep their nice big beautiful boats), they were all elderly people who drop their anchor and when it hits the ground they think they're secure...they dragged more than once. And sometimes we're the entertainment dancing with our anchor (it happens to everyone)...We anchored, ate lunch, had our anchor drink and the wind quickly changed direction from the West to out of the North and picked up. I checked our hand-held to see if we were dragging and noticed we had a Hydro Power line right below us, worse, it was right about where my anchor had laid. I've heard stories of people leaving their anchor behind because they can't pull it up. Julie knew I wouldn't sleep well so we pulled up our anchor, remove the 20lbs of weeds and moved east about 50ft and dropped it again...probably not our last dance. :)
That afternoon, Julie and I got in the dinghy (by the way, cruises call it a 'dink') tied it to the port side of Boomdeyada and washed the hull, then waxed a section (a very small section, my arm was killing me)...this will take several weeks, maybe months to complete. We swam (water temp 75F), laid out some cheese, olives and pepperoni and sipped on another rum. We sit now in the cockpit listening to music (yes, Jimmy Buffett again) and taking in the setting sun and changing sky.
Cheers
Dwayne & Julie
sv BoomDeYada
MMSI# 316026055
Skype: dwayne.sadler or Julia.sadler
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