Frenchmans Bay to Presqu'ile
Lake Ontario
Thursday June 30
June 30 - the seventh day out from Bayfield (and the thirteenth day for Roland, if you count the pre-Bayfield days). Another beautiful morning and beautiful forecast. The weather had generally been amazing from the time I joined this trip, with virtually every day being totally or mostly clear, and with rain occurring only once - in the evening for an hour or two after anchoring in Rondeau Harbour.
We had a simple objective today... make best possible distance eastward along the northern shoreline of Lake Ontario. There are plenty of little bays, coves and islands in and around the Prince Edward County area, so we felt pretty confident that we'd find a decent spot to anchor pretty much no matter where we ended up tonight.
It was dead calm as we motored out of Frenchmans Bay and into Lake Ontario. We put the sails up anyway but soon decided to run the motor again - a configuration Roland refers to as 'motor-sailing'. Our combined speed was decent enough - around 10 km/hr (6 knots) - to make effective progress.
We glided past the Pickering Nuclear station and headed east. Two hours later, we passed another nuclear plant - the Darlington Nuclear Generating station. This was where Roland's friend Wayne worked, and we waved as we motor-sailed by. Wayne knew we were going to be motoring by his workplace today, so perhaps he caught a glimpse of us.
Winds were light as we continued eastward along Lake Ontario's northern shore. Again we saw a decent number of other sailcraft as the day ticked by. Now more comfortable with Simply Blue's diesel engine (and impressed with its fuel efficiency), we motor-sailed where necessary to keep our speed up. The engine was running smoothly and coolly since our fix.
However, one minor quirk became apparent during our days aboard Simply Blue - a strange interference between the motor and the radio. I had been using the built-in car stereo to tune in to my favorite CBC radio shows, and I noticed that if I did that while the motor was running, the volume would often (not always, but often) fade to nothing after a few minutes, and no amount of additional volume would remedy it. If the motor was then cut, the sound came blaring back. Now that I think about it, Roland had always said that he prefers 80s pop music to boring talking - maybe this was some elaborate scheme on his part....
After about 110 kilometres of eastward progress (60 nm), we reached the more complex shoreline in and around Prince Edward County - a large landmass that sticks out into Lake Ontario. We were close enough to Kingston now that we did not have to push much farther. A full day's more sailing the next day would fairly easily bring us the remainder of the way.
Roland chose the bay of Presqu'ile, at the western end of the county. The large bay had many smaller sub-bays and coves - perfect for finding just the right spot out of the wind for the night. We followed the well-marked channel into Presqu'ile bay and found a quiet spot not far in called Calf Pasture Cove. Only roughly 130 kilometres of sea-distance remained to Simply Blue's new home port - a distance we should be able to do fairly easily in one more day.
Click below to watch a video wrap-up for June 30:
Video wrap-up for June 30
