Sunday, August 19, 2007
Calm seas to 1 meter. 43.9 miles traveled today from .

We had coffee and left Kincardine at 7:30 an hour behind Renewal. They're pushing on to Sarnia tonight - long day for them. Before we left, I saw Dave having his morning coffee and stopped to chat with him briefly. He had holed up behind a Bird Sanctuary at Stokes Bay. He wanted to draw me a map of where to stay at Stokes the next time around and I reminded him that there might not be a next time but he made me a map and brought it down before we cast off. That was really sweet of him.

Once underway, I gave Wayne the helm and went below to make fried egg sandwiches. The bread was moldy though so I pitched it and made egg salad pita pocket sandwiches and we had tomato juice with it up top. Messy business - egg salad...

It looked threatening today so we had our rain gear and life jackets out (it never did rain). The skies were something else - beautiful shelf and building cumulus clouds with a rain bar (?) under the darkest shelf. I can't really call it a rainbow, because it was like a long bent line under the flat part of the cloud with the rainbow colors...

Pretty uneventful, and cold all the way here. We ran aground (or should I say asilt) at the mouth of the Bayfield River We came 1/4mile down the river to almost the end where it got reaaaal skinny before we came to #90 - the slip for us to pull into. It was a bow, 4 line tie up which we'd never done. I overshot the pilings and reversed to line up and into the dock. They told me just to come into the one I'd lined up on but I'd already reversed and was forwarding into the correct one (Ha!) We tied up to the posts and saw a couple of the Bayfields here - there were quite a few I noticed coming in. Quatrefoil - a 36 foot, and a 40 foot - called Startin Monday, and a couple smaller ones on our side of the river that I couldn't read.

After 20 years, Kolibrie has made it near to where she started. Born in Clinton (inland a bit), and probably launched here...

After Wayne had a couple beers and settled down, we wandered over to the restaurant and got some dinner. Then wandered back to the boat. Smells good here, they have a picnic area with fire pits and people sit around them chatting. We saw the family from Port Elgin/Kincardine that live here - they spotted us and came over to say hi and glad to see we made it. They have an hour drive home and headed out only to return because their daughter left her cell phone on the boat.

Saw a beaver swimming up the river. At first I thought it was an otter, then muskrat because it was bigger, then as he swam up to and under the stern and out, I saw it was a beaver - it was cool to watch him swim up and past us... I loved the sight. Cool tail - I'd never seen a beaver swim before- especially so close to me.