Overnight

The weather looked nice, so I biked to the boat and sailed or motored to the sandbars, where I spent the night.  Next morning, there was still no winds, so I drifted back and motored to the gut and back to the club.

Hugh Kennedy race with Scarlet and Maud

On Friday afternoon, I biked to Addison and Abra to pick up a new NTC temperature probe to fix the BELLUM fridge thermostat. It worked.

Jason and Mike had gone sailing.  When they came back, we headed to BELLUM and polished off a fine bottle, along with all my chips and pork rinds.  Chris joined us.

Saturday was damp and windy.  Scarlet, Maud, and I changed the headsail from 155 to North 135.  We headed out, and Scarlet and Maud shared the helm.  We were unable to get the boat to perform. We had a bad start, about one minute late.  We never caught up.  We made good progress on the runs with our whisker pole, but we were still dead last.  As might be expected from the competition we had.

The docking was haphazard.  The pick-up line snapped.  But the dinghy saved us.  Scarlet did an excellent docking with very minimal coaching.  I took over once the line snapped.

After the race, we had some drinks aboard BELLUM, and I attended the RS-feva fundraising event and then spent the night aboard BELLUM.

Sunday, I was planning to go to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, but decided to help Alison take photos of the open house. I turned down an opportunity to sail the GNS Fall series with Espresso-X.

I witnessed the departure of Esmerlda for her voyage to the Bahamas.

Afterwards, I came back home and updated the Raymarine Axiom charts before my subscription expired.  Fibe 3GB was great for that.

Spontaneous six-day solo trip with Cindy

After a cool week at Tupper Lake and at home, the forecast was for a one-week heatwave, so I decided to spend the week on the lake. 

I called up Cindy, whom I had not seen in years, and we went to the club on Friday evening for the Saturday FFR with Scarlet and her BFF, who was in town for a few days. 

I asked Scarlet for confirmation for FFR, and she was too busy, so we cancelled.  

Cindy and I drove to the club and had supper there.  And we played pool.

Saturday was cool, wet and windy, so the FFR race was cancelled. 

So on Saturday morning, Cindy and I did Yoga with Sheila, and we took an afternoon nap.  About 5PM, it cleared up, and we sailed out to the sandbar and anchored there.

Sunday morning was nice, so we decided to go to St. Anne's.  We had ice cream and then set sail for Soulanges to see the Aurora Borealis peaking on Monday night. We spent two nights doing nothing.  Unfortunately, we did not have a dinghy with us, so we could not visit the shore.  The sky was clear both nights, but we saw nothing in the sky.

We had the following malfunctions on BELLUM.

The radar reflector broke and was hanging from the spreaders. 

The fridge thermostat wire broke, and I jury-rigged it to run manually. 

The head was full, and the water tank went empty.  We had never intended to be out for so long.

Cindy opened the curtains, which had not been opened for years, to discover there was a lot of black mould on the inside window edging.

On Tuesday morning, we departed for the club, going through the Seaway by motor and taking the shortcut - bypassing the zigzag channel.

Cindy showered as I repaired the radar reflector, filled the water tank and did a pump-out.  

We were heading for Lachine's Quai 34, one of Cindy's favourite spots.  We went for a walk, did some shopping and dodged some scattered showers.  I went out later to find supper.  I got a rotisserie chicken from Metro.  

On Wednesday, Cindy went for a walk and got some Timmy's.  About noon, she decided to head home by BMW.  I motored back to the club, cleaned the mould on the portlights, did some laundry, and tidied up the boat.

I cleaned the windows and washed the curtains.

I helped Gerald take his mast down in preparation for his trip to the Bahamas.

I brought the Niskie bike back home in the Honda.

We had a great spontaneous week of six nights, with no wind, warm weather and good company.

Meals were fish and chips, strudel, sausages, pork tenderloin, ribs, confit de canard, chicken and ramean.  Mostly emergency rations. 

Later in the week, I picked up a new NTC temperature probe for the fridge and fixed the thermostat.

Tupper Lake Boathouse

 

Voilavie

We took Karyne's new boat out for her first FFR race.  She wanted to go out on Saturday, but I was not available.

John from Adult Sailing and a friend of Karyne a 420 sailor from PCYC joined us.

Lousy start, going the wrong way and not hearing the radio at the start.  We were not the only boat that did that.

A nice evening.  I went back to the boat and finished last night's pizza and had a Glenfiddich aboard Fugu.

Thursday with Scarlett, Louise and Phil

We met Louise at the AQVA dinner.  We invited her to race, and she came with Phil.  Scarlett was there too.

We had a close incident where we cut Expresso II off.  She had to veer off to avoid us.

Phil was a strong man.  He was way too strong on the lines.  I wish he would watch out for what he was doing rather than pulling fast.

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