Rovinj the Great Lakes

The threat of rain and thunderstorms got us going this morning. We took down the sails although it was a bit windy, it was dry. Removing the sails went quickly with three people. We started out to try to get to Tonawanda early in the hope of being demasted today. Without sails, motoring was our only option, but it would have been a decent sailing morning. Things went very bad went we missed the entrance to the Black Rock Canal that bypasses a bad part at the start of the Niagara River. We ended up going under the wrong part of the Peace Bridge. The next bridge was clearly too low for the mast and we turned to go back. But the current was so strong, we spent close to an hour going almost nowhere. Just before we were going to call for help, a US Coast Guard boat showed up and asked if we were OK. We said that we needed a tow and they obliged. It took them quite a while to pull us back to Lake Erie, close to a half hour. We then motored to the Black Rock Canal and went through a draw brid...

For what was supposed to be our last sailing day of the trip, it was a bust. There was no wind to speak of almost the entire day. We had the mainsail up but really didn't sail. It got so hot that we stopped for a swim. With a mile or two to go the wind picked up and there were several sailboats out just outside Buffalo harbor. We briefly contemplated a pleasure sail but after being in the boat and in the heat all day, we went in to get fuel and dock. It is lucky that we did. As we were docking the wind shot up to hurricane levels pushing the boat away from the dock just as we started to turn in. We barely got tied up and the winds shot up and it started to pour. We waited out the rain before finishing docking (mainly electrical hookup). We went out to the water to a bar for a relaxing drink and saw some of the other sailboats come in. There was one that looked a mess. The foresail looked broken or at least improperly furled and the mainsail was a mess tied to the boom. We were glad...

We started out sailing with very light winds and glass smooth water. We were barely able to make time. Winds picked up some but we were never going very fast. We had a moderate distance to go but had started early so we had time to tolerate slow progress to get some real sailing in. The winds died mid-morning and we had to motor the rest of the way. We did get to power sail some of it, until the minimal winds came directly over the bow. We got in early enough to get groceries. We stopped in Dunkirk last year but stayed at the Dunkirk Yacht Club. This year we are at Chadwick Bay Marina, right next door. This was a rental yacht, $80K per day we heard, that was parked in Presque Isle that we also saw at Cleveland. The boat behind it is bigger than ours. That's not a dinghy. I happened to notice the different shoreline in PA and NY. OH had more cliffs, PA and NY had lower shores but mountains in the background. Approaching the entrance to Dunkirk. We'll turn right just past the pow...

After three nights in Geneva on the Lake, we finally got sailing weather. The forecast was for winds from the south in the morning, a lull midday and winds from the north in the afternoon until evening. That sort of happened in that we had winds from the south in the morning but the lull happened early then the winds from the north started and ended early. Given that we had a fairly long way to go, we had to power sail when the winds died mid-afternoon. We got to Wolverine Park Marina in good time. We stopped here last year but stayed at the Presque Isle Yacht Club. We discovered a leak in the boat's cooling system. Our diagnosis indicates that it is a small leak in a gasket that attaches the impeller housing to the motor block. It should not be catastrophic, nor get worse (such as a hose coming off). The exhaust water was flowing well all day and the temperature never wavered. The water from the leak ends up in the bilge, which is then pumped out like a sump pump. This is not some...

It was extremely windy over night and into the morning. The afternoon would have been a nice sailing day but we had too far to go to sail it in just the afternoon. Since laundry and oil change were done yesterday, it was a lazy day  The waves looked like the ocean. View from the break wall on the lighthouse side of the channel into the marina. Our free time gave us a chance to start putting up the mast supports we'll need when the mast comes down for the Erie Canal. Rare sunset, for us anyway due to cloudy nights. Tonight we ate at The Old Firehouse Winery. I had a bourbon glazed chicken with vegetables. The glaze was a little sweet. The winery also made a beer called Backdraft Pilsner that wasn't bad. It was better than their wines which were all too sweet. Each category (dry, semi-dry, etc.) were at least one percent too high in residual sugar for the category. So there were no dry wines in white or red. They had a three piece band called Lyle Heath Band that was pretty good....