BACK AT IT!

Got back to the boat yesterday. It was fun to be back home in California for a short while, and we took advantage of being there by seeing family and friends, catching up with doctors, dentists, etc. and, of course, Elaine getting to her High School reunion in Modesto.

We left for the San Francisco airport around 3:30 AM on Monday, boarded our plane around 5:15 then waited at the gate for over an hour while some minor maintenance on one engine was completed. While that was going on, there was a small earthquake (4.0), but it was big enough to trigger protocols which shut down the runways until they were inspected. We finally lifted off around 7:30, which made for a tight connection in Chicago, but we made it. However, as we taxied out for take-off, we were #14 in line. Due to bad weather, there was a minimum 2 minute separation, so it took well over half an hour to get airborne. Once we landed in Toronto, we were informed that the “alley” was too congested for us to move off of the taxiway, so we sat between runways for another 45 minutes. All in all, we spent 4.5 hours in the air, but over 8 hours on the planes for our flights. 

[While I’m in a whining mood, I must comment on Toronto Pearson Airport. Leaving Toronto, we arrived more than 2 hours prior to our flight time, and just barely made our flight after standing in incredible lines for check-in, US Customs clearance and security checks. Upon returning, we were in just as incredible lines for Canadian Customs & Border Patrol clearance. Although staff was tolerant and, for the most part, polite, it was very obvious that there are significant systems issues with their international passenger processes. Toronto is a very large, cosmopolitan city (largest in Canada) and should be prepared to handle the significant passenger through-put. They are not.]

We spent a couple of days with friends in Toronto (thanks, John & Kathe!) then caught a ride back to Midland to get “home” to the boat. All the travel caught up with us yesterday, both of us feeling pretty wiped out, so we sat by the lake, swam and pretty much did nothing for the day. This morning a forecasted storm system rolled through and when I got up and looked outside, it looked like an epic Cecile B. DeMille biblical storm scene with grey waves, whitecaps, torrential rain coming down sideways, lightening and thunder. I kind of expected Moses to come walking by, leading a horde of people ready to walk across the lakebed.

We’ll spend today as a “prep” day, getting everything ready on the boat and taking a run to the store for some provisioning so we can depart tomorrow. We are about an hour from the north/west terminus of the Trent-Severn Waterway and we’ll retrace our route back through the 45 locks to get to Lake Ontario. Depending on time and weather, we would like to take a short detour into the Thousand Islands area of the St. Lawrence River before getting to the south shore of the lake and down the Oswego Canal to Brewerton, NY.

We have made arrangements to have the boat stored on the hard for the winter inside a heated shed where she will be available for showing, since we have decided to list her for sale. In preparation for that, we will take off and store all of our personal items, have some routine mechanical work done and get her polished and waxed. I suspect that we will be ready to head back to the West Coast in late September.

In the meantime, our cruising adventure restarts tomorrow…