This blog posting is getting written in the morning. We normally do our writing in the evening before we retire for the night. We left the dock at 0550 hours and didn’t tie up in our home slip until 2230 hours. At that point it was time for a quick glass of wine for the mate and a shot of rum for the skipper to toast our safe arrival and then off to bed.
The weather this trip has been “interesting”. That is sailor talk for difficult. It seems as though we have never really gotten stable weather systems that hung around for a while which means that planning days in advance has been impossible. This week was no exception. We wanted good weather to come up the lake as 70 miles in open water can be miserable if winds and waves are against you. A few days ago the forecast for yesterday appeared to be as good as it was going to get for a number of days so we made the effort to put miles under the keel in the canal, skipping places we usually like to stay in order to make our weather window.
As such it wasn’t a bad forecast, winds from the East at 10 to 15 which means winds off the stern quarter producing a bit of a roll, especially if the forecast was off by 5 knots on the low side. Two days ago it was quite windy, out of the east at 20+ knots with the next days forecast holding at 10 to 15, shifting south east which would be directly off our beam (lots of rolling).
Leaving Tonowanda early (0550 hours) we slogged up the Niagara river fighting a 2-1/5 knot current until we reached the Black Rock Lock which allows you to bypass the rapids on the Niagara. We ran a little faster than our normal cruise rpm and made the lock at 0725 as upbound traffic gets locked through on the half hours. When we called the lock on the VHF radio there was no response so we motored up to the lock entrance and read the sign giving the hours. It turns out the lock doesn’t start operating until 1100 on weekends, meaning that we wouldn’t get through until 1130, giving us four hours to kill. At this point the navigator was demoted to deck hand as this was the third miscalculation this trip. In his defense, when we have been down bound we always arrived in the late afternoon and upbound we always came through on a week day when operations resume early. Normally we don’t like to travel on week ends for obvious reasons. We are selfish and like the water ways to ourselves. The crew then set to work putting the mast back up and rigging the boat for normal operations. Fortunately there was no down bound traffic waiting to go at 1100 so the lock operators allowed upbound vessels (two of us) passage early.
Once into the Lake outside of Buffalo harbor, rather than set a straight course to Erie we headed for Dunkirk which is 30 miles up the shore line. Zigging a bit only adds a few miles to the trip. As we were looking at three mildly different wind forecasts and didn’t know which one was going to be correct we figured that Dunkirk would give us a bail out point if we needed. At worst we would be close to the shore so that if the wind picked up significantly we could always get closer to the shoreline to reduce the fetch and keep the wave action down, especially if winds were on the beam. It turned out by mid day the forecasts were starting to predict South East winds of 5 to 10 knots. It is pretty easy to make a prediction when the day is half over. As it was, we saw winds that varied from North to South and velocities from 0 to 15 knots, The steadying sail was able to come down just before sunset and was only really needed for an hour or so during the day.
It must be that time of year again on Lake Erie as the boat was covered in flies and we do mean covered. Even though we are totally screened in some managed to find their way into the boat which kept us busy, killing about 100 inside the boat after we docked. I can’t imagine the misery of a sail boater who is stuck out in an open cockpit doing the same trip. Actually, I can imagine it as we have been there and done that.
We had a couple of first today, one being cooking and eating dinner while we were under way. Normally our planning allows us to finish traveling, anchor or tie up at a dock before eating dinner like civilized folk. The other was using our two million candle power search light (its first usage) as we came into the dock. It seems as we get older our night vision isn’t what it used to be and being able to actually see the end of our dock and the boats on either side is helpful. When we purchased the spotlight in 2014 we were smart enough to buy the 12v version with a long cord that plugs into a 12v outlet at the nav station. We figured a battery operated one would be dead when we wanted to use it.
Yesterday: 96 sm (a record) in 13.3 engine hours. Total: 2248 sm.
Some statistics from the trip north:
42 Days from start to end discounting the week we came to Erie when Dad passed. It turned into more a boat delivery than a stop and smell the roses cruise.
553 gallons of diesel in 316 engine hours; 1.75 gallons/hr and 4.07 sm/gallon (3.6 nm/gallon)
Total miles since September of 2014 when we started traveling south: 15,000 sm.
Number of blog postings: 593, Number of blog views: 56,000
With this posting, this blog comes to an end. Liberty will be our summer home up north as we have the condo and C Dory in Florida. Travel to and from Florida will no longer be at 7 knots.
We will also be able to retire our Spot transmitter, saving us the $200 yearly fee as the only reason we had it was to keep Dad informed of our movement every 10 minutes.
As this blog was to document our long term cruise and we know that any cruises in Liberty will NOT be long term, but short (few weeks or so) it makes sense to put the blog to bed so to speak. Not many people will be too interested in our day to day activities when we are not traveling long distances. The fact that we have almost used up all of our allocated disk space on the WordPress site also tells us we have been doing this long enough.
All stop, done with engines. So ends the gospel according to Dave 🙂
Dave and Bobbi.