It's THAT day!!!

     "Oh, I've been missing you, and the way you make me feel inside...."
                                                                 -Gregory Abbott


    Finally, SWMBO and I can stop looking homeless.

    Winter here in Southern Ontario is a time of slumber for our vessels, stored on the hard, and, for sailors, a season of  dirt-stranded planning , forethought, and inevitable procrastination...

....  which means all the jobs that SHOULD have gotten done during the depths of winter get compressed into a frenzied fortnight of forced labour leading up to splash day....

... which means every spare minute is spent in the Bridge Yachts boatyard, punching through all the planned punchlist projects that were  pushed off by the punishing winter...

.... which means that one is always travelling with a vehicle packed full of tools, work clothes, paint, epoxy, generator, ladders, wood...

... leading uninitiated onlookers to wonder if we are indeed living in our Ford.

  As usual, we fell prey to mission creep.

We knew we wanted to remove the carbuncle, a dead depth through-hull transducer installed ahead of the keel:

   Which we did.  Beveled, backed, filled, and faired...

  While slathering on eleventy-seven coats of Interprotect 2000, we realized that this would be a good time to repaint the blue boot stripe, which clashed with the bottom paint, and if we're going to do that, we might as well removed the worn cove stripe...

... which we did, and then realized that, without a cove stripe, NextBoat's already generous freeboard looks beyond generous- it looked like Liberal spending in the 905 prior to an election.

...So clearly a new cove stripe was in order in addition to the boot stripe:

Since we're changing colours, red bottom paint is out, black bottom paint is in...

  with the stripes and the bottom looking good, it behooves us to clean and wax and buff the hull and make it all shiny.  Which we did.  Leaving us to finish installing the head, hoses, pumps, tank, new hose clamps on cooling hoses, and a list of more unsexy nobody-will-ever-see it stuff the night before we splash.


   We got it done, and NextBoat is now hullwet.

   NextBoat is also no longer NextBoat.

   Before:

  Now.  Please meet Karma:

The weather was nothing but cooperative in the weeks leading up to launch.  The last two weeks have been dry, sunny  and warm, culminating with HOT weather during the last few days before Karma  was launched...


....which ended the moment she began her transit from the yard to the Dock.

   
     (Frank and Lorraine were on hand to watch and take pictures)

By the time Karma  and I passed under the lift bridge, the clouds had rolled in, and long sleeves had been donned.  We figured we'd get the boom hung and sails bent on at the Dock, rather than waiting another half hour for the next bridge opening.
 

   
   (Okay, she ain't pretty, but she's purposeful)
  It was a prudent move.
 
    By the time we had cleared the river mouth and made the turn to port to the marina cut, the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up.

     After tying her up safe in our slip, we realized rigging could wait.

  Within minutes the winds picked up, the temp plummeted and we were deluged.

   It hasn't warmed up since.

   No matter. We're back in the water, where we belong.

   We're home.






Thanks for taking the time to read the D6C.  If you liked what you read, please Talk the Dock! Spread the word.

Up The River, But Not Up The Creek, Part One

"...in the face of a hurricane west wind..."
                                  -Gordon Lightfoot




  This time last week, the temperature was below freezing, and the first snow of the season was flying.

   Today, the snow is gone and the temp is positively balmy, but we are getting slammed by a meteorological freight train that hasn't slowed down since it left Kansas.  Steady 40-50 knot winds hurt your face.

   Here's how the Lake looked this afternoon:

     Steady 40-50 knot winds hurt your face.


   So, I figured this a good time to revisit a more placid day in Port Dover.

   It's mid-September, and the weather is well and truly balmy,  not too hot, not too cold, not too humid, not too dry, a little underwindy, but oh, well... one of those late summer/early fall days that are too good and too rare to waste.

   SWMBO and I decided to put it to use by making a Quack run up the River, seeing what we could see.

  Th is is hardly the Canadian equivalent of a Joseph Conrad/ Coppolian saga- the Lynn River is the tributary that inconveniently divides Port Dover...

                                                                                         -image courtesy of portdoverwaterfront.com

..... it is also the source of some small controversy.  As you can see on the map above, the Lynn flows from Northwest to South, through the town of Simcoe, then into the town of Port Dover, where it meets Black Creek, flowing Northeast to South, and then discharges into Long Point Bay.

      The controversy arises below the Y- is the waterway south of the confluence the  Lynn River, or Black Creek?  Some refer to this stretch as "the creek", others as "the river", others, noting that aforementioned body of water has been dredged, widened, straightened and breakwalled, refer to it as "the channel."

       Personally, I figure a creek can flow into a river, yet a river cannot flow into a creek, just as a town can grow into a city, but a city cannot grow into a town...ergo, it is the Lynn River which empties into the Bay, not the Black Creek.

      (Not that anybody really gives a shit. -ed.)

      Er, anywater, we had been up the River and up the Creek dozens of times, always aboard the mothership, but had never turned left and taken the Lynn less travelled, as it were.  Concerns over the uncertainty of draft, airdraft and general  there-are-never-any-sailboats-there-so-sailboats-must-not-be-able-to-go-there logic led us to mark the upper Lower Lynn with "here there be dragons" on our mental chart.

     But, not wishing to leave any local waters unexplored,  we decided to take an hour or so and make a Quack attack.

    We tied up NextBoat opposite the old Misener fish plant, clambered into Quack, our 7 foot long inflatable, cranked up our trusty Suzuki O/B, bid our floating condo adieu...

...and headed upstream.

   We putted past the Port Dover Harbour Museum...

  ... past the new dinghy dock, snapping pics of the intriguing boat tied up...

lifeboat/tender/pilot boat from a freighter?

 ( Please comment if you have any info.)

     ...then under the lift bridge and past the Scruton fleet...

... then past the Bridge Yachts yard, and then past Dave Matthews yard,  into the heart of tug town...

   I admit, I am a sucker for tugs...

    and who doesn't like a beautiful woody?

  ...  get your minds out of the gutter.

   We pass the Nadro Marine yard...

... bear to port and head up the Lynn, into the elephant's graveyard of the Harry Gamble shipyard.

  Meanwhile, to starboard...

The juxtaposition between banks is almost jarring.

   and back to our port side...

   

 and then things start to get ...interesting.


     The Gamble yard is acres of old tugs, barges, lifeboats, pleasure craft, engines, winches and rust, covered with an increasingly impenetrable cover of foliage.


      It's intriguing as hell.

We spotted this inlet....

...before we noticed the cottage beside it

 

Of course we had to steer in, to see what we could see...

      As our outboard began to bounce along the bottom, I realized how silted up this basin had become.  That tug  is never leaving again.


      We retreated back to the Lynn and continued upstream.

  More to come later this week.


  Meanwhile,

"Talk the Dock!"