Day 18. Thursday July 10, 2025

We have decided not to go through the Welland Canal and into Lake Ontario, instead we’ll do a circumnavigation of Lake Erie, taking our time. Sorry about being behind on the blog posts. Part is being busy, and part is the passages when I don’t have WiFi.

We woke at 5am waking me out of a really good dream. Oh well!

Weather:

Outside. T 66° 2.65° humidity 94% Winds are calm sunrise is 5:48 AM and it’s chilly and damp. The harbor Waters is like glass. It’s cloudy outside.

Inside the boat temperature low 71.2° high 83.1° currently 73.4° humidity low 57% high 84% currently 80%

0556 started the engine.

0558 cast off 0604 increased rpm’s.

TWS 5.6 kts, TWA 127°, compass course 178° iPad speed 4.8 kts, GPS at the helm 4.7 kts

0615 raise mainsail just outside the harbor. Lowered CB. Lots of little bugs in the cockpit.

Next waypoint is to Mohawk Bay, DTW 10.29 , BTW, 257° too, ETA 8:14 PM. COG 255°, HDG 346° true, SOG 6.1 KTS.

We noticed the windmills start at the west end of Mohawk Bay, sooner than on the charts. I counted 18 of them turning in the light breeze. Canada is known for having many large windmills along the lake shore. Finally the sun came out behind the low clouds. 0720 TWS 7kts, TWD 096°, TWA 7kts bist Speed 6.4 kts, Compass course 262°

0850 changed course for Evans Point. BTW 261°, ETA 0941. COG 257°. SOG 6.1 kts. 0850 we passed 6 fishing boats near Port Maitland.

We continued motor sailing until 12 noon when we let the headsail out, decreased engine rpm’s, 1206 Eng off when we were sailing. TWS 8.1 kts, TWA 121, SOG 4 kts, boat speed 4.1kts, BTW 267°, DTW 5.82 nm ETA 132pm. By 118pm, we had to roll up the headsail as we reached out destination and 120pm we started the engine. 132 pm dropped the main sail, 135pm we raised the CB. Lorraine hailed the bridge tender on Channel 16 then switched to Channel 06. The next opening was at 2pm. I miss Changes maneuverability. Katie O doesn’t like to back up and goes to port. Every time we back up, the stern goes to port even with our new flexi fold prop. So Phil would go forward a little and straighten out the boat, then we had to back up and went to port again, each time getting closer to the bridge. I was glad that the bridge opened a couple minutes early. Now we know that we need to approach a bridge slowly next time leaving plenty of room.

We docked at Port Dover Yacht club after turning to starboard and then had to reverse hard pushing the bow off. This also brought the boat to port and helping to turn the boat more to the right. We went forward, we pulled into the dock with port tie up at their guest dock. Then we pulled the boat back so we were in the shade from this big tree in front of the yacht club. There are trees across the river that shade the boat later in the day. Donna Murray (husband is Pete SV Promise a CS 33) came to help us dock and gave us the code to get into the building to use the bathrooms.

430- 515pm we got some rain. I was able to get the PDYC‘s WiFI and worked on a blogpost. Casper came onto the cockpit for a short time since he fell off the boat. We checked the reciprocal agreements, and we get the first night free then $2.50/ foot per day. They have a Friday night dinner, which is sold out. I watched a couple of YouTube videos and then went to sleep.