July 9 – Monday
Last night brought storms beginning about 02:30 with lots of rain. Thunder, lightning and rain would come and go until nearly dawn but no problems aboard FLGHT. The morning felt cool-ish at 07:00 but that ended about 09:00 when humid air moved in with the breeze. Then just plain hot for the rest of the day – no one from any of the other 10-12 boats are moving around much. We are still waiting for the right conditions to shoot over to Canada and all WX sources are still saying Tuesday is the day.
Polly and Kathy from Renaissance went for a long walk around town and returned with some fresh greens and a plan for a nice salad for dinner.
I did a few prep things to get the boat ready for an open water crossing. I put additional ropes around the dingy to back up the normal rigging that holds it in place on the swim platform and lashed the anchor in place on the bow platform, and tied down the chain in case we get into a pounding situation. I still must install a strap to secure the cooler on the bridge to some stanchions – the bungee cord that normally keeps it from sliding around would be useless in really rough seas. Before we get under way in the morning we will put everything that is loose into a compartment or onto the floor of the cabin – coffee pot, water jug, soap dispensers etc. We will also don our auto-inflating life vests with built in safety harnesses. Hopefully this will all be unnecessary if the conditions are as advertised but wasted preparation is better than a fire drill in panic mode. I also thought I should probably do some navigation stuff so I plugged a couple of waypoints into the GPS plotter, but really, when I looked at the wide area chart for Lake Ontario, all you need to do is keep the boat pointed up (north) and you can’t miss hitting Canada. There are bound to be signs when you get there.
After fussing with the boat I walked to the hardware store to get an additional hose for use with the “sea water pump”. Flight is equipped with a pump that draws sea water for the purpose of washing the mud off of the anchor and chain as the windlass brings it in. Now that we are in a fresh water environment that same water source can be used to wash bugs and general dirt from the side decks. The extra hose will allow reaching to the back deck when necessary. The fenders also get muddy sometimes from the lock walls.
All this mundane activity somehow fills the day. When you have been moving along on a daily basis for a few weeks, this hanging out for a couple of days feels strange. I even resorted to sticking the fuel tanks with a measuring stick I made up last year and did some calculations. Since refueling recently, we have burned 10.2 gallons of diesel for an average consumption rate of 1.697 gal. per hr. At that rate and power setting we can cross Lake Ontario 23 times before we run the tanks dry. Yep, we are ready to get going – the blog update is even complete on the day the things have happened.