August 6 – Monday
As advertised, the weather was bad, so we stayed another day at Westport. The wind and off-on rain kept us in the cabin much of the morning. Polly used the time to make some progress on the painting of a puzzle she is making for Grandson Cameron’s birthday and I spent some quality time in the engine compartment where happily I discovered no problems of any kind.
The rain had stopped so we decided to take a walk “up” to the town – up as in a very steep hill. We were told we could find a grocery store and hardware store, as we needed a few perishable things and Polly needed wood glue for the puzzle project. We found Main Street of Westport to be very charming and both stores had a lot of character, much like stores we have been in while on past biking vacations in Vermont. The hardware store had been there for 82 years and was run by a third generation woman whose mother still handled the bookkeeping, manually. Sales were handled with a modern register and then daily data given to “Mom” who then converted it to her manual set of books. The woman in the store told us she has sometimes added a few cents of her own money to the days take to be certain everything agreed to the penny before it went to her mother. I almost forgot, the lower portion of the building also houses the brother’s woodworking business.
After we returned, a couple of the marina dock hands came to our boat and told us we needed to move forward to make space for some boats that were coming into the marina from an anchorage, because of the WX. The result of our relocation put us into a very tight “hole” with the 6 new arrivals packed around us, so later in the PM, when the weather had improved, we carefully twisted FLIGHT out and went to the fuel dock. After taking on a bit of diesel and pumping out the holding tank, we relocated to the end of a long newer dock so we could easily leave before the office opened in the morning. Next to us in our new spot was another transient boat with Beth & Ray aboard. They were from Troy, NY and had come to Lake Champlain for a weeklong vacation cruise. They had been waiting all day for the mechanic to take a look at a steering fluid leak. I (RCB) helped Ray check out certain things and we found that the leak was coming from a seal where the steering shaft enters the rotary actuator. The mechanic had now revised his plan and was scheduled to come by their boat first thing in the AM Tuesday – I hope they can get a quick solution.
We dined on the remaining tortellini soup Polly had made a few weeks ago (from freezer) and accompanied it with chunks of good Vermont sourdough bread supplied by our friends Sherry and Frank. It was a peaceful and quiet night.