The BIG lake...the waves, the bucket and the corkscrew

As promised, here is the lake crossing on tuesday.

Right now (friday) we are anchored near the locks in Iroquois, and should make it home tonight.  I will keep updating over the next few days to give you the rest of our trio and some pictures I have not yet been able to get you, since we will have better internet once at home.

Tuesday

Rise and shine, up and at’em, time to get set up to cross the lake.  Beautiful sunrise, the lake looks quiet, rigged up Scream and propped the engine on the rails. More efficient and less stuff on the deck. 

Time to wake the boys for breakfast.  Thomas woke up saying he loves the song in Rio.  It’s gonna be a good day :). We had breakfast and off we went. Pretty strong wind out on the lake, sometimes reaching 20 knots, waves starting at about 0.5 to 1 meters,  and as we went along, it kept getting stronger and the waves were getting higher, sometimes reaching 2 meters. Thomas and I started feeling queasy, even Liam for a while there was pretty pale green. When the waves hit the side of the boat, it gives a rocking motion to the boat that’s not the most comfortable. And after a while, the boys get bored; so distractions are in order.  Once Thomas had made good use of the bucket (I will spare you the chunky details…), he had a good long nap.  Sebastien had a great idea and we had movies out in the cockpit.  Once Thomas woke up, we played him Rio of course. Our DVD player got rocked, splashed, and still works! Phew.

We sailed across from Little Sodus until about Wolfe island about 9 hours – once we turned after Main Duck, the waves were hitting us from behind and the side – time for the corkscrew….erk….so we added the motor to try and get there as fast as possible and kept a bit of sail to stabilize.  After about 11 hours we made it  into Cape Vincent.  To give you an idea, crossing the lake is a little bit shy of crossing from Florida to the Bahamas.  

For a while there we could see something was brewing in the sky and when we docked in Cape Vincent,  our neighbours said, “relax, you made it in time.”  Turns out they were calling for a good storm.  Well before the storm, we had a wonderful sunset, had time to make the burgers, some rain, and a double rainbow.  Out on the concrete dock, we still felt like our body was rocking in the waves.  Never get used to that feeling of hitting land. Once again the boys did great, but this time, hats off to our Captain; the conditions were not easy and it was a LOT of work to steer the boat but we made it right on schedule.  

Well it was indeed a good storm, mostly wind, but we got rocked and banged most of the night.  Cape Vincent is a very cute town, lovely park, easy access to stores etc, but what a crappy dock.  But hey, it’s free!  The next day was beautiful sunshine, and while Sebastien did the oil change we didn’t have time to do in Little Sodus, the boys and I went to visit the dept. of fisheries small aquarium. We also walked around town, and while out in the park, Sebastien invented a new version of golf with rocks (the night before, the boys had built themselves small anchors with some of the rocks we found in Sodus, some tape and some rope).