We are finally on the road and I am testing out my new offline blog editor for the iPad (using Posts, for those of you who are interested). As with most of our trips, we hit a few setbacks. By the middle of last week, we knew that leaving Saturday morning was not realistic, seeing as I was working up until Friday. So we decided to give ourselves an extra day and leave first thing Sunday morning.
Saturday morning we got up in good time and made our way with the boat trailer to the sailing club. We made a few stops on the way and were patting ourselves on the back for getting to the club before noon when we noticed that one of the pads on the cradle was missing. This is the part of the boat trailer that actually supports the boat. It's pretty important. So we unhitched the trailer and re-traced our steps to see if it had just flown off and was waiting for us somewhere on the side of the road. After making it all the way home, and checking all the parking lots from our various errands, we glumly realized that it was gone, whether it had blown off or some rapscallion had removed it while we were in Walmart, we were missing our pad. Our goal of getting the boat on the trailer by the end of the day was not looking so good.
We still readied the boat in case we managed to find a solution. Many of our friends at the club said they had some at home. One very generous couple who we often see at Pinhey Point on weekends gave us their address in Manotick and told us where we could find their cradle pads. That's one of the many great things about the sailing community: they are incredibly generous. This is something we first learned when we were sailing Lake Ontario. In the evenings, people we had just met would invite us over to thier boats and feed us food and wine. What's not to like!
The harbourmaster at the club eventually found us an extra pad, so our trailer was ready for the boat! After a drink aboard our friend's boat (see?) he and a few other friends who had just come in from an evening out on the water helped us de-mast and lift the boat out of the water and onto the trailer with the crane. When all was said and done, it was 9:30 p.m. It had been a long day!
One good thing about having all day on the boat was that David finally got to the bottom of a pesky leak that had been making our lives difficult since we bought the boat. We decided to delay our departure one more day so he could fix it, which I was happy about since I hadn't even started packing yet, and as many of you know, that is always a gruelling ordeal for me.
So Sunday was fix-the-boat/pack/generally get organized day. And our anniversary! We didn't see much of each other, but managed to have a nice meal with one of the bottles of wine from the wedding, before David went back to the club for the last part of his repairs.
So Monday, we manage to close up the house and get out the door by 10:30 to head back to the club to pick up the boat. David figures he has about an hour left of work to get the boat road-ready. Maybe we'll be on the road by noon!
But alas, the screw gun stops working and we can't find the one we keep on the boat ANYWHERE. Panic! After digging through the entire boat, the screw gun has not been found. It's now 12:15. David unhitches the trailer and goes home to look for the drill. I stay on the boat and keep searching until the heat gets the better of me and I go to the club house for a glass of water. Once I've cooled down and heard from David that the sought-after tool is in fact not at the house, I resolve to brave the stifling heat in the boat and do another search. I pull out the flashlight and start rummaging through all the hidden compartments in the boat. I finally find it, nestled in its black case in the back of a storage space underneath the settie. I couldn't see it without the flashlight because it was so dark in there and the case was black. When David got back we only had a few things left to do, and we managed to leave by 1:30.
Of course, as soon as we had passed our place on the highway, we remembered that we didn't have the boat registration. So back we went to get that. The cat seemed unimpressed to see us back soon. He had probably prepared himself for us to be gone for a long time when he saw the pile of bags growing at the door.
So we finally hit the road- for real this time- at 2:30. We called the marina in Quebec where we are putting the boat in the water to let them know we would be late...again. That's three times we've had to postpone. But maybe they expect that from Ontarians.
So the boat is going back in the water tomorrow morning in Lacolle, QC, where we are just a short sail away from the US border. This will be our first border crossing by boat, so that should be interesting. Stay tuned!
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