Saying good-bye to friends

Tuesday morning we heard about the thunderstorms causing flooding around the Toronto area and knew the storm was heading our way. We decided to forego our laundry trip into town. The day was sunny, we all enjoyed the sun waiting for the storm that was to reach us by 15:00.

Adam called over to us (they were anchored next to us) that his diesel engine on Prism was unable to turn over to start…seems like low voltage in his batteries. I sat for a bit to give it some thought and came up with a plan, but first went over to assess the situation. His batteries needed a top up of water, distilled water, that we happened to have aboard BoomDeYada. Next we tied on a dock line to the stern of his boat, jumped in the dinghy and using the dinghy motor (9.9hp) we started to pull Prism’s stern towards BoomDeYada. We managed to get both boats close enough to run a 50 foot 30amp power cable between our boats, I turned on our diesel generator and plugged in Prism to charge her batteries. She started up shortly after and we released our boats to swing back in to position.

The storm didn’t really materialize at our end of the lake, on the St. Lawrence River…and good weather was forecasted for the next week.

The anchorages have been good…only 9-12ft deep …so it’s no problem to lay out more rode than the minimum 5:1 ratio. Good holding too so we don’t really need to worry about dragging…but ever anchor is different.

Wednesday:

Today, Colette and Cara decided it was time to start heading back towards home. They have some friends in Picton they wanted to visit and needed to rendezvous with Gunta from our Club, as Cara needed to get back to work; Gunta was sailing back with Colette. When they were ready to leave, they came over and presented us with a beautiful card that expressed our feelings towards them as well…they are special friends and dear to our hearts.

Prism and BoomDeYada tied up again to get her started and Adam made the decision to purchase new batteries when we return to Treasure Island Marina on Friday.

While Julie and I were in town to do laundry, we bumped in to Mike and his wife Kevin, fellow members of our Club…it was becoming an EYC (Etobicoke Yacht Club) reunion. They were staying in the Marina for the night but would come anchor by us the next day. When we returned to the boat I checked my new batteries (4 weeks old) and they needed to be topped up as well! Although we are enjoying this shake-down cruise/vacation, we also start to talk about the challenges ahead...taking down the mast in Oswego, managing the locks of the Erie Canal, down the Hudson River dealing with tides and currents, over-night on the ocean from Manhattan to Cape May, NJ and up the Delaware River. We figure once we make it to Annapolis, MD it will be much less stress going forward, mainly because we should be pretty comfortable with handling BoomDeYada.

Sorry, slow connection, will post pictures soon...