June 24-28

On Sunday morning, Roxanne, who I had met the previous evening, in the Tall Ships Landing building and her husband Wayne came by to see our boat.  They are hoping to do the loop in a few years.    We left Tall ships marina in Brockville  just before 11, and proceeded West on the St. Lawrence River.    We met another freighter just after we got into the Brockville cut.

There was a current, and Andy was only able to do about 11 Km  per hour at 2000 rpm, when normally we are closer to 14 -16 Km/hour.  Here’s an indication of how the markers were affected by the current.

We went by Mallory Landing, where the Parks Canada administration is located, and saw another of the Gazebo’s that dates back to the early 1900’s.

We had planned to maybe stop at Georgina, but the docks were taken, so we went on the Endymion, those docks were full as well, so we went around to the back of Endymion and  tied up to a mooring ball.

 

I followed the instructions, given to me by the captain, threading a rope through the mooring tire, while on the back swim platform and walked the rope up to the front.

No injuries to me, or skinned arms, like what had happened in Florida, the last time I tried to hook onto a mooring ball.   We were only there for about 10 minutes when the RCMP boat stopped by.  They had asked us a few questions about crossing the border and then talked about boats and the Loop.  One of the constables is planning on doing it in the next few years.

We left the next morning and slowly cruised to other Parks Canada Islands, which he hadn’t stayed at.    There was no room at room at Beau Rivage or Aubrey, but we did find a spot at Mermaid.  Here are the rocks just in front of our boat. 

We met some people from Brooklyn NY, who were on a house boat, and they shared some really good fish soup that they had made with the previous days catch.  They didn’t stay at Mermaid

as the fish were not biting there.  Later in the afternoon, this very large Yacht cruised by

and then   threw out its anchor.  It had 4 seadoos on its upper deck that they lowered with a crane.  Oh, the life of the very rich!!

The next morning at about 7:30, the Yacht moved on down the Bateau channel.On Tuesday morning, we left Mermaid at 11:30, and went down the Bateau channel past Trident Yacht club on our way to either Milton Island or Cedar island- the two park islands closest to Kingston.  Just past Trident we came across this row of animals all lined up in the channel. 

I suspect it is that people will slow down for them, so not to create a huge wake at their dock.  When we got near Milton around 1:30, we saw that there was a dock available, so we slowly moved into the Bay.  We only had about 5 feet of water, and there was a huge boulder in the middle of the bay, that we had been warned about I took some pictures of some of the flowers on the island,

and a view of Lake Ontario.

That evening we joined the other boaters at a campfire, until the mosquitoes appeared. Strong winds and rain was predicted for Wednesday, so we left Milton just after 7:00.  The water had about 2-3 foot waves

, in the open, until we reached the protection of Amherst Island, and then again in the big gap, after we reached the end of the island.    We travelled for several hours with the plans to anchor behind Ram Island, where we had been in the past.  At about noon, we encountered a huge downpour, and decided to anchor at Witlow Point.  We didn’t move at all during the night.  On Thursday morning when I went to pull up the anchor there was at least 50 lbs of weeds attached to the chain.  What a mess.  I had to pull them off by hand.  It took about 15 minutes to clean off the chain.  We left Witlow point at 7:45, just around the corner from where we had anchored was this farm. 

We passed  through Deseronto and Belleville, while Andy was driving, I did some cleaning in the boat.  We arrived at Trent Port Marina shortly after noon, it was still overcast, and seemed like it might rain, but it didn’t materialize.

I did a couple loads of laundry, and then we did some grocery shopping at the nearby Metro.  After dinner we went up to the club house for a couple drinks and watched the country singer.  We will be here until Sunday morning, for a 2 day American Great Loop Cruisers Association  looper lifestyle seminar.  There is suppose to be 100 people at the seminar on Friday and about 82 on Saturday.