scifiknitter

It's hard to believe that it's two weeks already since we spent a few days on Minuet, sailing from Clayton to Gananoque and back again. Life has proceeded at full tilt boogie speed ever since we reentered the flow of our daily responsibilities. I took pictures, though, and my memories haven't yet been completely submerged by the forward rush of our lives. Originally this was to be the year when we would take a full week to cruise on Lake Ontario. Then our daughter asked us to visit her during the Montreal Jazz Festival, which would be occurring at the same time as our week of sailing. We shortened the planned trip to five days, allowing enough time to also fit in a trip to Montreal. Then the meltdown of the NY State Senate affected one of my husband's projects, and he needed to be close to a phone and Internet for a few days. In the end we had five days on the boat, which meant three sailing days. We juggled plans again, and decided to go spend a night in Gananoque. We...

Ever so surely, the good weather is coming. It's still pretty cool - those who have planted their tomatoes and basil are covering them nearly every night up here, and we had a fire in the woodstove last night. When it is still light out at 8:30, though, you know that the warmest part of spring should arrive soon. I spent several hours during last week getting our sails ready for use. Both our mainsail and our primary headsail are getting a bit long in the tooth, and usually need some repairs before sailing season starts in earnest. This year the mainsail passed inspection, but the genoa needed long stretches of new edge facings on both of the edges that are exposed to wind and wear. The genoa is a huge sail, and very heavy, so sewing the facings on is arduous even though the sewing itself is very simple. I folded the sails after inspection and repairs - the only time they will be neatly folded all year. Assuming that we don't need to take them down during the summer, they'l...

We have been itching to replace our boat canvas ever since we got Minuet. Someone in the boat's past had decided to put blue canvas on a beige boat with brown trim. The finished look did not appeal to our sense of aesthetics. Even a bad color choice tends to hang around for a long time, because boat canvas is durable, custom made, and very expensive. I know how to sew, however, and invested in a Viking 5530 sewing machine a few years ago. This is a 40 some year old machine that has a powerful motor and a low gear that can punch right through heavy duty projects. There is also a company, Sailrite, that sells kits and materials for those who want to make their own boat canvas and sails. Our canvas needed more repairs than usual at the end of last season, so we decided this was the year to replace it. We saved much money by buying kits for a new mainsail cover and dodger, especially since we got 10% off everything. Gotta love a sale. For those who don't know boat lingo, a dodger...

We have a pretty bare-bones set of instruments on our sailboat. We have a logometer, which tells you how fast you are moving and how far you have traveled. We have a compass. We have a depthmeter, which tells us how much water is under a sensor on the bottom of our hull. Currently, the depthmeter doesn't always work - we plan to replace it next year. That's it. No GPS. When we bought Minuet, she had a LORAN receiver and antenna. This is a navigation system that locates one's position using a network of low-frequency radio transmitters. Our system did not work, however, and it turned out it would be difficult and expensive to get our LORAN receiver repaired. It also seemed it was uncertain that the LORAN network would be maintained. We decided to junk the system. What we did have was a pile of charts for the St. Lawrence River from our sailing days many years earlier. I thought that after that length of time, we would have to replace them. It turns out, though, that they we...

After much rain during the night, we woke up in Kingston in the morning to a mixed sky - blue with patches of dark gray clouds. We walked over to Pan Chancho to buy goodies for breakfast and lunch. This is my favorite bakery of all time. No low-carb diet for me, not when I can get fig and anise bread. We would be sailing with the wind as we headed back to Clayton, and we had all gotten enough sun the day before, so we decided to leave the sunshade up, and sail under headsail alone. As we headed out, there was ominous grayness behind us. We were sailing flat, so Q came up to enjoy the air and the view. She's a good member of the crew. She will even take the wheel and help with the lines. href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyGL43MWThUIfbgDzCVacuUjGUk7YzUFKTWwHInE_iIEi92NJi-s3DBXcJ66Ck4h4avG4MHTDjMmT_hjtbFrVEPKa5YaDxMWjcRHnJ7hSziWfKTdmpKAVHOHBgwLWuXoxr99L0DvyFCcWG/s1600-h/IMG_0867w.jpg"> More Q shots: Here she admires our iHome-2-Go, which wa...

We have spent little time on the water this summer. There have been all those band gigs... and the house siding project... and grad school... and family visits... and the rain. It has rained just about every weekend. In fact, lately it has been raining just about every day. When it hit August and we had spent all of four hours on the water so far this summer, we said to heck with it - we are taking a sailing trip, whether or not it rains. We decided to sail to Kingston, Ontario. The weather forecast for the weekend was very sketchy, but it looked like if we got up and off, we would be able to sail on Saturday morning in relatively good weather. So we headed to Clayton after supper on Friday, determined to cast off the next morning. We had a glorious sail on Saturday. The wind was coming pretty much from where we were headed, so we spent six hours sailing close-hauled. That means we were sailing as closely into the wind as we could, and doing some tacking to stay on course. It also mean...

I'm so busy right now, I feel like summer is going to slip by with no chance to enjoy it. By "it", I mean the warm sun, the lush plant-life, the water, the great outdoors. We have sailed all of two hours so far this summer. This is pathetic! Of course, there have been a lot of rainy weekends, which doesn't help. Other contributing factors: It's budget time at work, so it's hard to take time off. I'm knocking down the work, as much as I can in the heat. Showtime is July 24th, when I must have a budget together. Our band has eight gigs this month, which is a lot. We have four gigs next week, which is probably too many. My sister and her family visited the last weekend in June, and they are coming back this weekend - my niece is attending a music camp at a nearby college. Fun, and they would go sailing with us, but there just isn't enough time. My grad course this term is a killer. I'm taking Governmental Budgeting - which I thought would be a slam-du...

We went to the St. Lawrence River late Saturday night. The plan: sleep in on Minuet, eat breakfast out, put on the sails, and take 'er out for a spin. Robert's chest has finally healed enough from his fall out of bed a couple of weeks ago to make sailing feasible. Ana was eager to get out on the water, too. We took Q the sailing cat, and Lucky to see how he would do on the boat. It was very, very windy Saturday at home, and I was glad we decided to wait until the evening to go to the boat - it was too windy to try to control huge, heavy pieces of fabric. A hot, humid wind was blowing briskly when we woke up Sunday. By the time we got back from breakfast at Bella's, there were whitecaps in the bay. Side note: The food at Bella's was excellent, as usual. Ana had french toast made with banana walnut bread - luscious. To me, breakfast out means eggs, so I had spinach feta quiche with salsa. We hung out on the boat, getting up our nerve to put the sails on. Robert and Ana to...