Wednesday June 23 – Woke up this morning pretty early – 6:30am – made coffee, and spent my time looking at charts and thinking about where to go next. The VanGeldrens had reported that they were having some problems with one of their batteries charging properly, so they headed back to Penetang around 10am. After looking over the charts, I decided there was a very nice anchorage at the northern end of Beausoleil Island called Frying Pan Bay. It is still part of the Georgian Bay National Park and it actually has two little docks you can pull small draft boats up to. We can get rid of our garbage and maybe find a map of the park too. Kathi is napping, and I am probably going to go for a swim and then putt over to the docks and check out what is there. Maybe we will make lunch when Kathi gets up from her nap.
Everything was looking good while Kathi napped – another sailboat came in an anchored and then a small trawler. There were already two medium sized powerboats already there when we arrived – one anchored and one at the farthest floating dock. Then a fleet of four big powerboats came in. They were yacking loudly on their radios to each other and pounced on the larger near by floating dock. They just moved in and took over the dock, setting up their umbrellas and table cloths at the picnic tables, making it impossible for anyone else to use the facility. The largest, probably in the 50ft length plus class, had his built in generator running constantly, presumably to power their air conditioning. It weren’t all that hot out! - Just open up the darn screened windows. The sad thing was that as I looked over at the transoms I saw US flags and could see their hailing port was “Huron, OH”! Unfortunately, so is ours as when we USCG documented the boat we were at the Huron Yacht Club. We would like to change our hailing port to “Cedar Point, OH”, but it costs like $350 to make the documentation change.
I took a swim and scrubbed the bottom of the dinghy. I think we still had growth we brought from Lake Erie with us on it. Then I re-did the “tridle” (my three tailed bridle) I had created, removing the non-floating line and replacing it with some of the floating kind. Then I had one of our favorite Liverwurst mustard and sliced onion sandwiches. Back into the water to swim - And than damn generator was still running and puffing out diesel smoke. These guys are just rude and definitely not green.
Thankfully then the rain came – thunderstorms too. Supposedly there was a tornado in Midland! And did it rain! So hard my leak fix was not good enough. I noticed earlier this morning that the sealant I put in had been pretty thin and with the heat and cold stretching cracked open in a few spots. I will need to let it dry out again and put on a thicker layer, but duct tape may come first as a temporary remedy. Boy oh boy did it rain - our dinghy was half full. When a break finally arrived around 8:30pm, I went and bailed it out.
So at least the rain ruined the power boaters’ picnic, but the damn generator is still running. Nothing like coming to a supposedly pristine spot in a National Park to have the bird and frog sounds drowned out by the constant hum and splashing sounds of a powerboat’s generator. I also spotted a rare variety of beer cans on the shoreline. Probably cannot blame these Huron, Ohio guys, but I guess when you get close to tourist areas, the crap builds up and the nature goes away - except for that one cheeky seagull that flew in and sat on our dinghy’s engine until I jerked the tow line.
No comments:
Post a Comment