The July Dock Digest- Lots of Really Good Nothing

     "I'm gonna tell 'em that I've got no one to blame..."
                                                   -Sheryl Crow



*I recommend grabbing a beverage- I've got a lot of ground to cover here.*

  So, where to begin?

  At the lack of beginning, I suppose.

  As I am sure you have figured out, Faithful Reader, I have been procrastinating.

  And a near bloody thing it was.

   See here's the thing about procrastination, it's a delay of stages.
  
   It starts with, "I'm (tired, busy, working, sailing, eating, drinking, pick one), I'll do it tomorrow."

   Then "I'll do it tomorrow" becomes "I'll do it this week," then this week becomes next week, next week ends up in the dust and becomes last week, then last week becomes two weeks past, then becomes last month, then  Procrastination Induced Panic (henceforth known as PIP- if it's not a documented disorder, it should be)  starts to nibble the already frayed edge of my writer's psyche, and I begin to wonder if procrastination has mestastasized into writers block or worse...

.... have I run out of things to write?

  Or am I just fuckin' lazy?

   Neither diagnosis is an attractive one, and in either case , the only solution is to sit my fat ass down in front of a keyboard and pound away until I produce something fit for consumption by the voracious hungering masses handful of loyal readers who have, thankfully, stuck it out and stuck by me.

    If I can't come up with something fit for consumption, we still have this.

     So, as Inigo Montoya uttered, "Lemme sum up"

    July was a great, busy month.  But I realized I should backtrack:  Let's review who is on the Dock roster this year, who is on the disabled list and who is missing in action:

     Phil and Whiskeyjack are back, Gordon and QuidiVidi are back, the Irelands are back, Rick is back with 20th hole, (still for sale), Hillary is back, Jordan is back, with a new-to-him ex-Jack Bluenose, Buttons,

  Eric is back with After School, his DS20, a boat muskrats seem to admire:

 Jamie and Tran have upped the Soundbox fleet game with a pontoon boat.  Yes, it may arguably be the coolest boat on the Dock.

    Nancy and Drew are back with their Precision 23, resplendent with refinished brightwork and renamed in Nancy's honour...

Frank and Lorraine are back in the slip beside us with their new-to-them O'day, Keara and Bruce is back with Prolific, two slips down...

   ...and of course Jack is back, splashing a Bluenose...

 ...and with Jim's Carpe Diem returning, that's  4 on the Dock this season- that may be a record fleet west of Mahone Bay... I even got him to take the helm on Karma:

  Speaking of helming Karma,  SWMBO has demonstrated a degree of badassery at the helm.

     The rental SeaDoos are corraled at the foot of the Dock again. 'nuff said.

   John is back to work, cancer-free, and busy, so his Sirius 22 is absent from the Dock this season, although he still wanders down from time to time.


The water level is WAY up.  Two winters with almost complete great Lakes ice-over really helps.  This season, the water level is at least 3 feet over 2013, month for month.  It is a little weird to have to walk UP from land to get onto the water.

The water level is high enough that Hillary was able to safely make a run into Hoover's Marina in Nanticoke, normally a dicey proposition for a boat with a 5' draft.

We paraded in the Canada Day boat parade on July 1....

...finishing 3rd, behind Keara....

which got us $25 and a nice plaque, now hanging in Karma's saloon.

Speaking of Karma's saloon, a number of low-buck projects found their way onboard-  the tv wall was covered in the aft cabin...

and I built a new cabinet to make better use of the storage space in the saloon:

and the cockpit table is finished and installed in the, er, cockpit.

More on that later.

Pottahawk was relatively trouble-free and drama-free this year-  nobody sank in the fairway, for instance.  The return parade was relatively subdued, evidence that all had a good time.

  The weather has been damn near ideal for sailing this summer, so we sailed.  We sailed Ereni, we sailed Karma,

 We discovered what a sweet sailing boat a Bluenose is.

And I am again racing on Cyclone...

....where out crew continues to surprise with their skills including spinn pole surfing:

  And there's lots more going on- stay tuned.

  All told, life on the Dock doesn't suck.

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

Post-Pottahawk Party Pandemonium

     "I got my swim trunks and my flippie-floppies..."
                                               -the Lonely Island




         The annual Pottahawk Pissup is over.

          Here's a recap, by the numbers:

          2000 boats*
          1500 boat trailers*
          10000 people*
          1972 pirate flags**
          174 designated drivers*
           437000 cans of Busch Light consumed.*
           2.5' average water depth.
           5 degree (celsius) increase in water temperature compared to the day before*
           (It's not called a Pissup for nothing.)
           6 arrests.
           8 sent to hospital

           And then, they all came home.

           See, here's the thing about the Pottahawk bash- boats travel to the uninhabited speck south of Turkey Point throughout the day, and even the day before, staking a claim and getting a head start on festivities...

       But most boats return from whence they came in a crush in the evening, everyone wanting to get home and loaded on trailers before dark.

   

        For some, the ride home was a long tow on a short rope...

     ...only to meet the same fate as all the other rampies who trailer their boats- a long wait to get off the water at the end of a long day on it.

    Some decided to cool off  by swimming in a working fairway:

  Which didn't seem to be working much at all...

       

 
    You just know at least one skipper couldn't find his truck keys when he got to the front of the line.



                                  *All figures PFTA (Pulled from thin air)
                                 **Except the pirate flags.  That's pretty accurate.  Those damn things were                                                     everywhere.




    "Talk the Dock!"
   

A Very Big Month, Part Two.

  "From the shore to the water, guess there isn't any more."
                                                  -Brian Hyland




  You've likely already read the first post I quickly cobbled together covering Pottahawk 2012 (aka "The Pottahawk Piss-up"), but in the context of this Very Big Month, I figured this Very Big Event needed a little more coverage.

   According to the OPP and The Simcoe Reformer  more than 2000 boats and 9000 people converged on Pottahawk Point to ogle, jiggle, giggle, drink American beer in cans and pee in the water. Marking the entrance to the Inner Bay on Long Point Bay, Pottahawk Point is accessible only by water.  This is important to remember.




  Boats were filling the fairway early Sunday morning,  some making the short trip to the Point more successfully than others,as we have already seen.

This boatload of bad-asses was keeping an eagle-eye on the festivities to prevent the stupidity from getting too, er, stupid.

                                                                                                          -Image courtesy of Simcoe Reformer


The boat count is probably pretty accurate, but I think the warm body count might be off.  See, if you divide 9000 by 2000 you get... uh...
an average of   4.5 people per boat.  Most boats we saw heading to (or attempting to head to) Pottahawk Point had more than 4.5 people in them.

   This year there were no major injuries reported, and only couple of arrests for intoxication and stupidity-related offenses.

   Remember that part about Pottahawk being accessible only by water?  This year, only about a half dozen or so unlucky souls were left stranded on the Point when they realized that all the boats had left, and they neglected to arrange a ride home.

Feel free to create your own punchline.

And don't forget to "Talk the Dock!"

Pottahawk 2012- First Casualty

     "One time too many, too far to go..."
                          -Talking Heads






   7 people
  16 foot ski boat
   4 coolers.
   You do the math.

  Right in the middle of the fairway, just off the end of Dock One.

  Luckily, no one was injured, although two pizzas and two bottles of booze were lost to the depths, and a sandwich was cast adrift.

The boat hit bottom at about 8:45, and by 9:00 the Coasties had it hooked, cleared, floating and in tow back to their dock to be pumped out.  They were so efficient I didn't even have time to get a picture.
 By 9:35 the boat was being towed back to the ramp for it's red-faced young owner to reclaim and re-trailer.

"Talk the Dock!"

Small boats, Great Lake, Bay Close-up.

       "A fella beeped up in an automobile, said you wanna work in the tobacco fields..."
                                                                                                -Stompin' Tom Connors

     Better grab a refreshment now.  This one's a long one.

     In an earlier post I scribbled:
     "There seems to be something about the extreme southern regions of every country that makes them a little different from the rest of the surrounding nation. The Riviera is nothing like Normandy, Brixham isn't Cambridge, Melbourne's not Sidney and New Orleans sure as hell ain't Kansas, Toto.

    I am not going to theorize on the reasons why this downward-bound eccentricity occurs, I just know that it seems to hold true.  Maybe it isn't a matter of direction as much as it is proximity to a large body of water, but if it was only water, Baffin Island would be much more interesting than it actually is.  So, it seems like the "south" part is an integral component of this spell.  Adding more empirical evidence to this theory is the fact that Norfolk County is not like any other place in Canada."

   And then proceeded to babble about something completely different.  Now that we've got the Lake Erie overview out of the way, I figured I should go back and pick up on this theme.

    When Dollier and Galinee decided to Park in the Bay, they met the Neutral Indians, whose fortunes were caused to Reverse by the European Drive to explore , leaving their numbers Low.
Oh come on, it's not like you wouldn't automatically go for the cheap chuckle as well.
Okay, I'll stop, before somebody beats me with a stick.
That was the last one.  I promise.

      In time the bay became home to British settlers, notably United Empire Loyalists escaping from the Thirteen Colonies who established farms and mills and an ironworks and life was pretty much Little House on The Prairie-esque, except for Long Point itself.  We'll cover that sandspit of eniquity in a later post, but it was a pretty rough neck of the woods before the US Civil War.   Port Rowan, Port Ryerse, Normandale, Turkey Point and Port Dover were founded.  Fishing became  a big industry toward the end of the 19th century, about the time that Port Dover started to became known as a tourist destination.  On the whole,  things stayed pretty staid in sleepy Norfolk County until the mid-20th century, when a new crop became popular....
...Tobacco.

      Until WW II, wheat and corn were the big commodities in the county, but after the war, farmers were quick to see the big rteturn from small acreage that tobacco could provide.  Nobody local knew how to grow or pick the stuff, so croppers were imported from the southern United States and French Canadian migrant workers handled the grunt work.  By the 1950s, Norfolk County was the heart of the Tobacco Belt,  boasting tobacco auctions and huge tobacco warehouses, and the influx of newcomers made a mark on the region.

   (The next bit is best read in your best Casey Kasem voice.)

     One of those newcomers was a young guy from Arkansas named Ronnie Hawkins. Not a tobacco cropper per se, young Mr. Hawkins followed the tobacco road north, figuring, on the advice of Conway Twitty, that there might be a market among transplanted Southerners for the sounds of home.  He formed a local  version of his Arkansas band, the Hawks, with his old pal Levon Helm,  newcomers Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Simcoe's Rick Danko, and played clubs and small country dancehalls throughout the Tobacco Belt.  The Hawks garnered some serious acclaim and respect from their contemporaries; Bob Dylan liked the Hawks so much, he persuaded them to leave Hawkins and back him instead.  Later, they went onto considerable success on their own as The Band.

     By the late 1980s the southerners were long gone and the Quebecois were moving on,  replaced by Mexican and Caribbean seasonal employees.   Thousands of "off-shore" workers toiled in the fields during the growing season, and they brought their cuisine with them.   Many of them liked the area so much they decided to stay, leading to a thriving Caribbean community.  Today, most grocery stores around the bay stock a locally made tortillas, salsa verde, jerk sauce and tamarind soda,  and there are a growing number of  venues serving authentic Mexican and Caribbean comfort food.

     Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the bay, an industrial revolution was underway.  In the 1970s Ontario Hydro built one of the largest generating plants on the continent at Nanticoke, and a steel mill and oil refinery soon followed. Apparently, Ontario was running short on engineers and homegrown power plant know-how when all of this heavy development was taking place, because a large number of the longtime employees originally hail from Scotland and Wales, adding their own imprint to our cultural mosaic.

The planned city of Townsend was designed to house the warm bodies needed for this  industrial megolith, a population projected to exceed 100 000.

  It never happened.  Townsend today is a sleepy bedroom community with a few hundred residents, no retail establishments, and no plans for any future growth.

       Just as big things were happening on the farmland, life on the bay was changing as well.  The perch fishery boomed, and with the big demand for perch came a demand for bigger fish tugs.

  As the boats grew, they outgrew smaller ports like Port Ryerse and Port Rowan, leading to their decline in economic importance while boosting the economy of Port Dover, one of the only ports on the Lake that could accomodate the boats,  the gear that support them, and the fish processors who handle the catch.

      Tourism was changing as well.  Bikers discovered Port Dover, and Port Dover discovered bikers.  While other communities would likely throw up roadblocks if thousands of black clad Harley riders rode toward town, Port Dover rolls out the welcome mat every Friday the 13th.  In the early 80s a group of motorcycle riding friends decided to meet in Port Dover for an informal get together on Friday the 13th.  Since then the event has exploded, thanks to support from the community.  In 2010, on the 50th Friday 13th rally, it is estimated that upwards of 100 000 people showed up. The next one is Friday May 13th- Docksters, should we have a gathering to start the season?
http://www.pd13.com/dates.html

    Because of the huge numbers of motorcycles and spectators who attend, the town is closed to four wheel traffic for the day. Although "Parking is available outside of town and shuttles run continuously" as the ads point out, there's no better way to experience the 13th than from a boat.

  

      The Victorian and Edwardian era of genteel bathing and rowing a punt in a boater and jacket has given way to...
...Pottahawk.

   Every July thousands of boats and boaters flock to Pottahawk Point on the shore of the Point for music and babes and bikinis and booze.

       Pottahawk is to Turkey Point what Friday the 13th is to Port Dover.  Turkey Point is all about having fun, with a number of bars, restaurants, PWC rentals,  a cottage industry of cottage rentals, which all grew thanks to a long beautiful beach.  More Pottahawk info:   http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60027933849

     Alright, if you've read all the posts to this point, now you're up to speed on the who, what, how and where.  I'm not sure I can even begin to explain why.


   As always, thanks for checking us out.  Please feel free to "Talk the Dock."  Link us, follow us, tell your friends!