We've had great weather so far this trip; however, our luck ran out on Christmas Day. Our anchorage at Black Point gave us great protection from the east winds, but they shifted a little southeast and gusted to 35 kts. overnight on Christmas Eve. There were numerous rain showers during the day accompanied by gusty winds but we still managed a walk on the beach and enjoyed a quiet Christmas Day. Thanks to FaceTime we were able to spend time talking to Lesley and saw how nicely she has decorated our house plus we had a good chat with my Mother and all at Mark and Megan's.
Pierre Jasmin and his family from Mt. Tremblant are anchored beside us so we all went ashore for the criisers Christmas dinner at Lorraine's restaurant. We had a great feast and it was fun meeting new friends and discussing everyone's future cruising plans. After a great evening of dining and dancing we headed back to Dagny in the midst of a heavy rain squall and settled in for another windy night.

While preparing for our trip I decided to install an Vesper AIS which transmits our position to other boats that have AIS and also shows us their location on our chartplotter. This system is similar to transponders on aircraft and is a great safety feature, the bonus with our system is it has a built in anchor alarm. I don't know how many windy nights I've spent on Lake Champlain looking at the shore and other boats trying to figure out if the anchor is dragging. Now, one quick look at the screen tells me how far we are from the anchor and if we were to drag an alarm sounds at a preselected distance. Although we still need to be vigilant, I sleep a lot better.