Saturday, August 15, 2009

For the first time in a long time we slept past 0700 today. We had a leisurely start to the day and then lazed for most of the day knowing that it would be an overnight passage. We started out at 1630 to motor our way to Kingston, Ontario taking the outside route rather than through the Bay of Quinte.

The seas were dead calm - again. But the skies were clear and it was nice to get some breeze over the boat and ourselves. It has been terribly hot and muggy and, of course, since the objective of the marinas is too give refuge from the winds and seas, they are not the nicest places to be when it is hot.

I fixed supper along the way and we dined al fresco in the cockpit about 1930. We then both sat and watched the sea go by and the sun set behind a cloud bank.

Bill took the first watch and was so excited to be able to see a full sky of stars unaffected by lights. We were only motoring about 5.5 knots since we knew we didn't want to arrive in Kingston too early the next morning. I went to bed around 2100 expecting to be awakened in several hours for my watch.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Bill somehow resurrected his sleep habits from his artist days and didn't awaken me until 0400 so he could set a few hours rest before we reached Kingston. I took the watch and let the auto-steering do its thing through the calm see and hazy skies. I could see the stars above and the waning moon but the visibility was hazy at sea level. Nothing to worry about at all.

We started up the channel leading into Kingston at 0800 after having previously slowed down to 4.5 knots to allow time for the marina staff to some on duty but as we progressed up the channel the haze turned to fog. There is an area of magnetic disturbance in the channel and the recommendation in all of the charts and guides is to not rely on compasses and such because of it and if there is fog to just wait it out. Since this was a new area to us we decided to head back out the channel to a green can just off Snake Island and wait for the fog to lift as the day warmed up. By 0945 the fog had turned into sea smog rather than fog and we headed back up the channel.

We got confused about which was the correct entrance to the Confederation Basin Marina and following what we thought we understood from the gestures of a boater in the marina we started up the wrong entrance and promptly went hard aground on some rocks at 1030. There was no way we could get off by ourselves but the boater and a friend came out on his power boat, Irish Ayes, and after a couple of tries and kind of twisting us around and pulling us forward he pulled and we motored off the rocks. That was really fun especially for Bill with only three hours of sleep. But we did get off and were docked in the right part of the marina at 1100. We can only hope that there wasn't too much damage to the keel.

After getting the boat settled in and the electricity plugged in, we both laid down in the heat and slept some. We then spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out our planned routes and stops for the next week. We hope to be in Montreal Thursday evening with a couple of stops along the way. We won't get much chance to take in lovely Kingston, however, which is too bad.