Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Sailing the North Channel, day 1. August 20, 2012

We started out dark and early for our trip. We crossed the border into Canada at Port Huron-Sarnia and it was painless. We drove up along the shore of Lake Huron, and aside from several long construction areas it was uneventful.

We arrived at Tobermory in mid afternoon. We found the Harbormaster and signed up for the night. They placed us down on the end, farthest from town and the restrooms. Oh well, it's not easy to find space for a boat that's 20 feet wide! I scouted the area and told Bill how best to get down to the one launch ramp. He put the extenders on the trailier hitch, since the great lakes are all experiencing low water levels.


He backed down the ramp after the kayakers came up and we shooed out the kids feeding ducks. There were more spectators than ever before! This is a busy town in summer... People purchased ice cream cones and jockeyed for front row seats to watch us raise the mast and launch the boat.


Fortunately all went well... it actually looked like we knew what we were doing! Bill and Erika were on the boat (they are tall enough to reach the connections for hooking up the mast raising apparatus), I was on the ground cranking it up, and Toby was our gofer.


Bill, Erika and Toby took the boat around to our assigned dock while I drove the truck and trailer around until I found a parking place close to our dock. Unfortunately there were avout 30 steps down to the dock from the parking lot! I unloaded everything and Toby and I carted it down the steps to the dock. We got all the gear and food stowed while Bill took the truck and trailer to an off site parking lot to leave it there for the next 10 days.

We walked out to eat dinner, turning around to take a photo of our section of the harbor.


We had a nice dinner and it revived us enough that we went back to the boat and installed the rest of the sails--Bill and Erika had put the boom and main sail in place while Toby and I hauled our gear down. By the time it was dark we were in our berths with lights out. Now we are ready to begin our adventure!

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