Sunday July 10: Kingston, Ontario!

NOAA (our source for lake conditions) was right on today. Winds about 8 mph from the S so the 55 mile trip from Oswego to Kingston, Ont. was pretty nice. The waves still tended to push us from behind making steering a constant correction one way or the other but much better than heading into the wind and waves. The lake looked pretty calm both looking forward and looking back! Not much in the way of a direct, straight line heading until we were within 5 miles of Kingston. The only odd things were the windmills – we couldn't quite figure out what they were until we were closer. But they were fun to see. Apparently they provide enough electricity for all of Kingston (something like 85 windmills).

Kingston is called the sailboat harbor of Ontario and we discovered why: tons of sailboats out racing. The smaller ones in this picture and larger ones nearby in a different race. They really were everywhere!

There was a little trouble finding the marina we had reservations at but finally did find it. We had to go through a lift bridge that went only on the hour (we arrived about 10 minutes after the hour) so decided to try the stationary bridge with a supposed 18 foot clearance. Proceeding very slowly, we made it but Steve said we had MAYBE 6” clearance (our air draft with the mast down is 15'6”). And so the start of Rideau Canal begins :-)

Off came the bikes and we rode downtown to check everything out. The City hall was pretty fun with it's copper roofs and somewhat strange architecture. Many, many OLD buildings here. Can't remember when Kingston was settled though. Took a one hour trolley tour around the city – quite a few parks and nice bike/hike trails along the waterfront. There is also a fort here (seems like they were everywhere for the War of 1812) but we probably won't go to actually see it.

Most importantly we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary today with a great little carrot cake and Steve's usual great supper. This is probably the 35th of 40 anniversaries that we have celebrated somewhere on the water as that is usually where July 10th found us (except for Susan Buescher's wedding which was on July 10th!) We drove back from Canada to attend her wedding in 1999 (if my memory is correct :-) Happy Anniversary to Susan and David!