Sailing South- Toronto to Oswego

 

Saturday Sept. 12, 2009 -  Off the dock!

The decision to go south this year was a combination of many factors.

First of all the recession. My business dried up overnight – from a full book of business from November to spring 2010, to a few jobs with 2 clients. At the same time, Mary reached a point where she no longer wanted to do what she was doing – laboratory technology.

The third factor was we had a new venture – InformedBoater.com – and we were in the process of developing boating related videos that could be downloaded from the web site launched in January. We needed to develop more video – something that was hard to do in the frozen north of Southern Ontario.

At first, the decision was to take the boat as far as the Chesapeake in time for the Annapolis Boat Show in October and lay it up for the winter in Maryland. With the change in the economic climate, the decision became to head for Florida and then cross over to the Bahamas.

This spring (2009), we started to upgrade the systems on the boat in anticipation: new bilge pump and plumbing, new head (toilet), new faucets with a shower for the head, new sump pumps for the shower and the refrigerator, new hot water tank, an additional battery (isolated to strictly start the engine) and an inverter to give us 110v power while at anchor or underway.

The work finished up the day before we departed on Saturday, September 12, 2009 from the Outer Harbour Marina in Toronto.

We had secured new passports, Nexus cards for easier border crossing. And after trying to rent our condo, we decided on a clean break – sold the unit and put our furniture in storage. We would decide where we would live coming back up the Hudson River in the spring of 2010.

Early Saturday morning we quietly slipped our dock lines and headed for the south shore of Lake Ontario – trying for someplace east, like Olcott or Wilson, NY. The winds did not favour us and we landed at the end of the Welland Canal near St. Catherines. We motored east to Niagara-on-the-Lake and decided to cross the Niagara River to Youngstown, NY. We tied up at Youngstown at dusk. Docking on the Niagara River is always an adventure. There is a swift moving current down the river that reduces as you get close to shore - but not on a consistent basis.

With Sojourn secured, we assisted another boater tying up single handed. Seems there was an event at the Yacht Club and our dock mate wanted a place to stay after the festivities. Later in the evening, we met his wife who had driven down to the club.

Our next task - tell US Border Patrol we had entered US waters.

There are several ways boaters can cross international borders. The US Border Patrol website - http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/pleasure_boats/boats/pleasure_boat_overview.xml details what Canadian boaters must do (and cannot do) when crossing the border into the US.

We were going to be in US waters for 4 - 5 months. We were on a Canadian registered (versus licensed) vessel. We both carried Nexus cards which means we had been interviewed and vetted by both the Canadian and US security agencies. And we picked the wrong way to enter the US.

I really don't want to turn this blog into a technical article. We will do a future blogs on how to cross the borders between Canada, the US and the Bahamas. Suffice to say, it took an extra 12 hours to contact the correct office, supply the necessary paperwork and receive our 12 month US Cruising License.

Sunday Sept. 13, 2009 - Clearing US customs

Sunday morning, we headed up to the Pharmacy in Youngstown to receive our US Cruising License. We were told they had a fax machine we could probably use.

Beside the pharmacy was a market that had fax service advertised in the window. I called the US Border Patrol and they faxed our cruising license, good for a year, so it will do us for our trip home next summer as well. We set out for points east and under cruising spinnaker (Gennaker) we made it to Oak Orchard, NY by sun down. We tied up at the 4Cs Marina, had a shower and barbecued pork for dinner.

Monday Sept. 14, 2009 - Called back home

The next morning we left at first light and spent the day under cruising spinnaker again – achieving boat speeds of 6 – 7.5 knots. Not far off Rochester, Mary received a call from her brother to come home for a family emergency. We decided to put into Rochester, rather than carrying on to Pultneyville (our chosen landfall for that night) because Rochester offered more transportation options. We landed about noon and Mary was on the 4 pm bus to Hamilton.

Tuesday Sept. 15, 2009 -to Sunday Sept. 20,2009 - Time spent in Rochester

I had elected to stay in Rochester to track down a pesky leak in the head (yes, the new one I had installed) and to chase down an electrical problem. It seemed our batteries were not charging from the alternator, only when we were plugged into 110v shore power in a marina.

The head was apart for 3 days as I chased small leak after small leak. Finally finding a screw that held a valve in place that was not properly seated. It took hours to find, but I succeeded in stopping the persistent (and very smelly) leak.

The alternator had to be replaced and the technician from the shop found a number of wires that seemed to have little purpose for the alternator and may have, in fact, been contributing to our problems. This was not a surprise, because our 1981 vintage sailboat was rife with redundant wires – no longer required for their original purpose – just abandoned to get up to mischief. He installed the new alternator with the wires required, re-connected the tachometer and the boat was ready to go on Friday evening.

I took public transit to the Rochester Airport to rent a car to head back to Hamilton to meet up with Mary and pick up some of the things we had forgotten. Sunday morning, we were up a dawn, headed into Toronto for some last minute locker adjustments. Then it was back to the boat, last minute grocery shopping, returning the rental car and then to bed.

Monday Sept. 21, 2009 - Back on the journey

We were up before the dawn and under our number 1 Genoa, made it to Oswego. We thought it was going to take 2 days. It was great to do it in 1.

Tuesday morning we had the mast lowered at the Oswego Marina. Our 54’ mast took some special handling to get it settled safely on the braces we had set up on the deck. Many boats bring their brace material. We opted to rummage in the boatyard from the braces of boats that had come up the Erie Canal to Oswego.

We found suitable lumber and with minor modifications our mast was set in the braces for its journey to the Hudson River. The reason for taking the mast down is the many fixed bridges along the Oswego and Erie Canals. The maximum height is 15 feet. Our mast when mounted on the braces was just under 12 feet.

 

Mary and Rob MacLeod

rob@InformedBoater.com
s/v Sojourn
En route: Bahamas

In theory, theory and practice are the same thing.
In practice, they are not.