From our stopover in Buffalo we took a short hop to Pt. Abino where we sat on a mooring for two days and caught up on our project list. We're finally into the cosmetic type projects although I still have a few items that are more than just cosmetic. But they'll get done, we're on Island Time and what doesn't get done today or tomorrow well maybe in a couple of days.

The Buffalo Canoe Club sailors entertained us with their evening 'round the buoy racing. Their courses where just south of our mooring so it was fun to watch the tactics as they worked upwind and down. We went ashore for dinner last night at the Club and then hit the bunks early for we wanted to get an equally early start for the Welland Canal.

The Canal is principally for commercial ships the 600 foot type so our little 42 footer is dwarfed and is a second citizen in terms of traffic management. We arrived around 09:30, cleared Canadian customs, paid our $200.00 lock fee and then waited till around 11:30 when we were called along with two other pleasure boats to start through the canal. The entire trip took only six hours due to a slow commercial traffic day and not many stops. Eight locks dropped us from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario over 320 vertical feet. There was one point where there were three locks in sequence, into one, drop down right into another and then another each lowering us close to 50 feet. These locks dropped us the height of Niagra Falls, quite something to look back at the hill cars were driving over knowing we had just been lowered the same height.

The weather s...s, it's still very cold and it rained all day. I hope the Mac racers starting tonight and tomorrow from Chicago get better weather at least warmer.

Tonight we're tied up at Niagra on the Lake yacht club, quite the address, beautiful homes, culture out the cazo and lots of sailboats. This C & C heaven; on our walk after dinner Alice and I were amazed that almost every boat in the club was a C & C.

Tomorrow we are planning an early start and a sail toward the eastern end of Ontario. Everybody we meet tells us we have to visit Kingston so if we can't find our friends the Merrills, we'll head straight for Kingston enjoying sailing on Ontario.