Next Wednesday, November 6, I'll be presenting How to Achieve Your Cruising Dream to the Shellbacks Club, meeting at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, 75 Prince Arthur Blvd, Toronto.

This is an informative presentation, of interest to anyone thinking of or dreaming about going off cruising.

This is a lunch presentation. Lunch costs about $26, and is very good. You'll want to arrive about noon to order lunch and get a seat. The presentation will start about 1240, and finish about 1:40PM.

Hugh Reilly of Liquid Lunch, on ThatChannel.com interviewed me last week. Here is the interview (23 minutes):

Now that more ice has melted, I can see that the tree fell over entirely. This is the same tree, from a different angle.

The ice was too much for the tree in the previous post, and the weight knocked most of the tree down to the ground. This is how it looks now.

There is another gale today with snow, so everything will still be covered, but perhaps in another week the ice will have melted off the tree enough to see if part of it will survive.

It's been unusually cold & windy the last couple of days. An onshore gale caused spray high enough up this tree to freeze it into an interesting display.

The wind died down today, and it warmed up to a relatively balmy -10C, and is forecast to keep warming up, which is nice. Too much ice to get out of the harbor to go sailing, though.

I'll be giving my Sailing the Northwest Passage presentation at the Toronto Boat Show (Enercare Center, Exhibition Place, Toronto, Canada) on:

Sunday, Jan 20, 2019 1:30PM
Tuesday, Jan 22, 2019 1:00PM
Friday, Jan 25, 2019 1:00PM
Saturday, Jan 26, 2019 5:00PM


Check out the presentation and say hello.

I like sailing on the first day of a year because it seems a great way to start the year off. It's easier said than done to go sailing on Jan 1, in the Northern Hemisphere, away from the tropics. I've managed to go sailing on New Years day several times in New York, once in Alaska, once in Antarctica, and today, I managed to do it on Lake Ontario.

At the dock, with a stiff wind and temperatures just below freezing, we bent on the jib of my Grampian 26, tying the jib downhaul so the sail would stay down. We carefully put two reefs in the mainsail (easier to do at the dock than underway), then started the motor.

We motored out of the marina, then set the mainsail in Frenchman's Bay, a very small, shallow bay in Pickering, Ontario.

The overnight gale had broken most of the ice in the bay, so most of the bay was open, and we enjoyed sailing in the protected water, close to, and occasionally thru, the ice.

This bay is very shallow, with a soft, mud bottom, so getting near the reeds often results in getting into the mud. In an attempt to sail around a patch of ice, we went aground. I put the outboard motor in the water and tried backing off, with the crew all on one side to lean the boat over. The mainsail helped us lean the boat over, but also seemed to keep pushing us into the shallows, so we lowered it, and then Lee pushed off with one of the oars while I motored us in reverse and we came off after a few minutes, without needing to row out an anchor.

We raised the mainsail and stopped the motor and did some more sailing along the ice edge. After the wind died down a bit, sailed out into Lake Ontario, raised the jib, and revelled in the fresh air on a brisk, sunny day for a few hours, then motored back to the dock.

A great way to start off the new year.

UPDATE: I posted an 8-minute video of the sail on the Schooner Issuma YouTube channel.

Check the video out here:

The waves on the beach have taken much of the sand away from the base of this old tree. Despite its roots being bared, the tree seems to hang on well.

Winter seems to have arrived on Lake Ontario.

Naturally, it has not stopped me from sailing, but it has made for planning more carefully around the weather, looking for days with very light wind (to keep warm), and with not much ice to chop through.

Sailing magazine has published an article of mine on Winter Sailing in their latest (November/December 2018) issue.

For those not familiar with Sailing magazine, it specializes in large, beautiful photos about sailing, and the print version is easy to find at newstands in the USA.