Friday, July 30: Rest Day - Mostly

Today was primarily a rest day - although Steve would not say that. While I spent a good part of the day catching up on internet work odds and ends and keeping the laundry going, Steve fixed the front hatch because it had broken off where the hinges attached. It was actually a pretty poor design so it now will function for many years to come!

The other project he did which should have been minor was of course not. Before we left we had found that the shore power cord that provides power to the air conditioners was fried. Complete with melting of wires. So while we had a car, we had picked up what we needed to replace. Job completed. Can you tell which is the old one?!

I spent another part of the day figuring out where to go tomorrow. I think this will take more time than it has before as we are not familiar with the area and will rely heavily on the guide books. Our plan will take us to Byng Inlet - slightly over 40 miles - for tomorrow. For us this is about a 5 - 6 hour run assuming the weather cooperates. It will be the farthest we've gone in a day since we crossed Lake Ontario!

This is a general chart of where we will be for the next several weeks as we make our way to and through the North Channel and into Lake Michigan. I don't expect to have internet very often but will be in touch when we do!

Thursday, July 29: Made it Home to Parry Sound

As we left for the wedding in Seattle last Thursday, it was pretty easy to pack up: two backpacks, a computer, a cooler (which we left in the car in Buffalo) and the wii (which is in LA for a while). Enterprise picked us up and off we went on a 4 1/2 hour drive to Buffalo and an early flight on Friday.

The wedding weekend was a blast! We managed to see lots of Seattle, went on a harbor cruise as well as the Ride the Ducks cruise - with a crazy captain by the name of Davey Quackett! It was really a great time over the 3 days.

Almost all of the Franko's made it. I think some people thought we were going to show up in shorts and a tee shirt for the wedding - you know with living on the boat and all. Personally I think we cleaned up pretty well! Note the view of Mt. Rainer beside Steve's head. It was visible for all three days - weather could not have been any better.

We left Seattle for Buffalo early Tuesday morning but didn't arrive until almost 11:30 pm. No problem for the Kubits though. They were docked at Tonawanda on the Erie Canal and as Motel 6 always says "the light will be on"! So we spent Tues and Wed night on their boat. They are just starting on the Erie Canal headed east and eventually will end up in the Bahamas. Joe and Joy were our dock neighbors at East 55th Street in Cleveland. It was a great visit but the euchre games ended up tied 2-2. Guess we need to meet them again to play the rubber .....

Since we had access to a car for the first time in 2 months, we just went crazy getting stuff that it hard to find or haul back on bikes. We hit West Marine (3 times, 2 stores), Wal-Mart, JoAnn Fabric, CVS, 2 grocery stores, Best Buy and Home Depot with plans for breakfast in the morning at McDonald's before we have to turn the car back in at 9 am. All Steve has to do now is find room for everything! Stores are few and far between (as well as expensive) as we move farther north so the idea was to provision up before leaving here (which we will do on Saturday or Sunday latest depending on weather).

Wednesday July 21: Preparing to Leave for Seattle

We're still in Parry Sound - which is our departure point for our trip to Seattle. Andy and Helen's daughter Bethany is getting married on Sunday so the Franko clan is gathering to celebrate. Today started with a walk uptown for breakfast at Lil's - first breakfast out in 10 days which is surely a record for us!

On the way we were shocked to see a Whole Foods store - until we realized it wasn't the familiar Whole Foods stores from California but it was fun for a minute :-)

Steve got ambitious and rode to the hardware store, Home Depot and the grocery store (mostly uphill) as well as to the lookout tower (separate trips - but both definitely uphill) which overlooked Parry Sound. Quite the view. Meanwhile, I finished up the 3rd load of clothes so we are ready to go. Steve found an new use for Gorilla Guy - a place for my socks to finish drying! Gorilla Guy was a gift from my brother Tom quite a few years ago when I visited my Mom and Dad in Phoenix and Tom drove down from Tuba to join us. It was Easter - hence the bunny ears!

Enterprise will pick us up here at the marina in the morning, we'll drive to Buffalo (way less expensive to fly from the states) about 4 hours away and then fly out Friday morning. Our return is scheduled for Tuesday - we'll add a day detour to meet Joe and Joy as they make their way east in their sailboat on the Erie Canal. They were former dock neighbors at East 55th Street, sold their home and are on the travel 'til you drop plan!

Blogging to resume when we return from the wedding.....

Click and Clack Question: Where Did the Oil Go?

So we anchored out one night and ran the generator to cook dinner - no problem. The next morning, we started the generator up and after about 20 seconds it quit. Pushed the reset button, started it again and as before it quit after running 20 seconds. Got out the book and following the troubleshooting, checked the oil level. NO OIL! Ok - well the oil had been changed last fall and we hadn't checked it this spring before leaving (dumb thing to skip ...) but thought we must be burning it up as the generator smokes for a short period of time after startup. It was as good of a reason as we could think of! So we added 3 quarts of 30W oil and were good to go with the generator running great for the 1/2 hour to cook dinner. Stopped that evening, started the generator - it ran about 20 seconds and shut off. Guess what? NO OIL - again! So Steve starts looking in the bildge, under the generator - no oil appears to be leaking anywhere. After all 3 (or possibly more) quarts of oil missing somewhere surely can't be hard to find, right? And there is no way anything can burn 3 quarts of oil in 1/2 hour. THE SOLUTION: I said to Steve "check the oil level in the engine - that's where the oil from the generator went". Sure enough - overfilled by about 5 quarts! The solution dawned on me when Steve said something about the valve for the engine drain was open half way. So the set up is like this: to drain the oil from both the generator and the engine with minimal fuss, there is a hose from each drain instead of a plug (like is on your car). These come together with each attaching at the top of a "Y" valve with a drill powered pump on the bottom of the 'Y'. Each line has a valve in it - open if you want to drain the oil and closed if you want to NOT drain the oil. So the generator valve was OPEN and the engine valve was 1/2 OPEN. As the oil pump in the generator built up pressure, the oil was pushed into the engine instead of providing oil pressure in the generator. End result: all of the oil in the generator was pushed into the engine! Who would have thought??? We are much more careful of the valve positions as a result of this experience :-)

Tuesday, July 20: Parry Island

We learned lots of things this past week - how to anchor, how NOT to anchor, what happens when you don't know where on the chart you are located and three days without being on land is enough for us!

From Midland, we traveled 91 miles (not a very long distance really for being out 9 days) so we are now about half way through Georgian Bay. This is the farthest north on Georgian Bay we have ever been in the past so from here on out, every place is totally new. May prove to be exciting :-) There are charts to guide us through the 30,000 Island region we are currently in. The charts have all of the buoys and show electric lines that are underwater (so don't anchor there), depths, most rocks and other information that allowed us to pick pretty good anchorage places.

One of our first stops was the provincial park near Honey Harbor. We stayed 2 nights on the dock there and had our first successful dinghy trip (which means we didn't drop the engine in the water while using the hoist to get it on the dinghy - and we found our way to Honey Harbor and back). Red raspberries seemed to be everywhere again - easy pickings from the bike path.

With this encouraging us, we picked out our first anchorage - Longuissa Bay. It was perfect - I woke up and saw the sailboat out of my little porthole by the bed. Kayaking was good - and we spent a peaceful night.

Georgian Bay itself is hard to describe - lots and lots of rock islands and wind that seemingly ALWAYS is blowing. It's actually larger than Lake Ontario - or so the rumour is. The trees actually grow crooked because of the winds. Lots of cottages on the lower part of the Bay - much less so as we moved north. The super rainbow was our reward for having to reanchor as we hadn't anchoring properly - had only one anchor out as when the wind decided to switch 180 degrees, we were loose - in the wind and the rain. So that was interesting. Since then we use an anchor on the front and a second anchor on the back. Much better!! And this after I wasn't on the chart where I thought we were. Looking down and seeing rocks is an experience that just is no fun - and the water is so clear it's really hard to figure out if we are about to run aground or it's really 10 feet deep. One part of the guidebook makes the comment that traveling through some of these channels is not for the faint of heart - boy is that right!

After 3 days in 3 different anchorages without going on land, it was time. We were headed for Henry's Restaurant on the island of San Souci - my father's favorite place to stop and I think the only reason he even wanted to bother going to Georgian Bay! It was nice - good food - good place to watch as boats came for lunch and dinner (some in a water taxi, some in sea planes). We slowed along the way in a protected area for Steve to put up the steadying sail (keeps the boat from rolling so much when the waves are from the side).

The work continues. I finally began on the front cabin - wallpapering to cover the water damaged mahogany veneer. It was ruined because of the prior windows leaking. Washing the boat from the dinghy kept Steve busy - until he decided to go fishing! No supper from it but he did catch a couple of small bass.

I think a Chinese restaurant is in our future tonight now that we can! Very hot again though so we'll wait til the sun gets a bit lower.

Tomorrow: a Click and Clack type dilemma we encountered - where did the generator oil go?

Saturday, July 10: Celebrating 39th Anniversary - Yet Again on the Water!

Today we celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary as hard as that is for me to believe. It's the same as everyone says - where did the years go! As far as I remember, every anniversary except the 1st has been celebrated on the water somewhere but mostly Canada. The first anniversary we spent at the farm: dinner at the old Brown Derby by Mansfield and the dessert of the top of our wedding cake at the farm with Mom and Dad. As I recall it didn't taste very good!

I'm not sure I would recognize the folks in these pictures if I didn't know they were us :-)

It was a great day again though. We started out with a short bike ride to the marina across the bay. Midland is really much nicer than I had remembered as we hadn't been here in probably 5 years or so. Their big thing is the murals around town that depict the history of the region. Seems Champlain made his was to this area of Ontario as well (the monument in Orillia is to him also). The large mural below is on the side of a working grainery. It's unique in that the sides are rounded but the mural itself looks relatively flat. The lake was windy today but beautiful with lots of boats headed out to the Provincial Park we will visit tomorrow.

Another cool thing here is the stainless steel momument to the trumpet swam. There were only 77 pair left in all of Canada in the 1930's but they have made a recovery - thanks to the efforts of some folks around here. They have a 10 foot windspan! I would love to see one in flight.

This is the harbor and downtown. There are lots of people walking the docks and having picnics under the shelters so there is lots of people watching going on. Yesterday's Dream is actually hidden by the large (100') private converted tugboat. The guy has been working on it for 17 years and it's really something! A bit large for my taste though!

Today was not without a couple of small jobs (unplug the air conditioner drain so water isn't being thown up to the ceiling of the cabin) and fixing the bilge pump. Steve made us a great anniversary dinner of prime rib and his sister Julie's sliced cucumber salad (which has become one of our favorite sides).

Tomorrow: a quick visit to West Marine (bike ride away) for a replacement bilge pump and then off to the island for a couple of days. No internet there!

Friday July 9: Midland

After the week in Orillia it was good to be moving again. Not that we've traveled a great distance but we made our way to the end of the Trent-Severn System and the last lock until we reach Chicago. We're now in Midland, Ontario.

What a crazy busy holiday weekend! We thought we could avoid some of it by leaving Orillia and anchoring out for the night at Big Chief Island - which we did - along with about 60 other boats who spent the night. No matter which direction you looked, boats were flocking to the place! And of course there are always a few boats who truly believe their role is to provide music for the entire bay - but hey - it wouldn't be boating without them! Not sure what time they quit - it was an earplug night. As we continued west, the line up of boats coming east was crazy with about 15 boats lined up to enter the lock we had just passed through.

Traveling downstream in the Severn River was a wild ride sometimes when the channel narrowed and all of that water from the drainage area had to go somewhere. The standing waves are an indication of how fast the current was! Our speed when from 6.1 mph to 10.2 - a new record!

Having spent the previous night at Big Chief Island, the quiet of Swift Rapids lock was wonderful. This lock (something like a 49 foot lift) is the largest conventional lock on the system and replaced a marine railway car that was built when the government ran out of money to complete a real lock. We rode this marine railway down back in the 50's - the new lock is much faster! It was again a hot day so we decided to head a short way (like 3 miles) down the Severn River to a small marina and spend the day in running the air conditioner! When it cooled off enough, we put the mast back up after it being down since we first entered the Erie Canal last August! Steve was happy :-)

We found a great place to anchor out again - the Lost Channel. Extremely peaceful - and HOT. Seems the entire east coast is sweltering in the same heat we have had up here. Our great thought was to move the boat closer to shore to take advantage of shade, right? Wrong :-) It was a fiasco - better done now than when we had high winds or heaven forbid - other boaters watching! First we grounded the back of the boat on shore (not intentionally) and with stumps and rock very visible, Steve had to tie a rope to the boat and pull us off. Meanwhile, the front anchor wouldn't hold and we almost drifted back again. Did I mention it was HOT? Anyway, it ended up to be a great place. The third picture was the view out of the little porthole when I woke up.

Big Chute: the most unique lock on the system is not a lock at all but a marine railway. We first went over this railway in the late 1950's when it was much smaller and way less sophisticated! We were the only boat going over so it was easy. We just drove onto the rail car after it was run into the water, the keel of the boat sat flat on the wood floor and the straps kept us from falling over sideways! Over the hill we went and back into the water. Total trip: about 8 minutes. The old rail car? It's actually still there but as of 2005 is no longer used as a backup. If you look closely at the last picture below, my mom is on the front of their Starcraft Chieftan - taken in the early 80's.

Wed night was again spent at a marina in Port Severn - just so we could run the air. Man, was it hot!