Scarborough to Coburg

Well we have made it as far as Coburg from Scarborough. I will type in some info first and pictures second, if that will work?

Pickering: Sept 17th
Short hop to pickering with almost no wind. Considered putting up the sails for the last 1/2 hr but seemed like to much work.
Stayed at Frenchmens bay Marina, the folks there were nice but Upgrades they are advertising are not yet in the works.
Visited with Debbie and Craig, had a nice lunch and Craig gave us an old Apple notebook with WIFI but no signal at this Marina. BBQ that evening with Kev, Bev and Megan and the search for Papa began.

Whitby: Sept 18th
The weather wasn't great and we knew Papa wanted to see the boat so we only did 2 hours and pulled in. Loaner bike into town for groceries, Papa saw the boat, used the BBQ for dinner and spliced some anchor rode before bed. Next morning hit the showers, nicest so far by a long shot. You get your own little, of many, bathrooms. Loved it I even shaved to go with my new haircut.

Port Darlington (Bowmanville):Sept 19th
Weather not so great again so we just made some time in the morning. Apparently The channel into the Port is only open on one side, silted up on the other. The East side of the channel is open, Naturally with the wind and waves we tried to stay to the west side. DOHHH!!! Eventually after consulting the map, the marina on the VHF, and rocking the boat we made it through the breaker channel. Following instructions to go within 10' of the wall. DOHH!!!, yup another grounding, rocking, etc and we finally made it into the Marina.

The good news is that if you eat at the restaurant you get 1/2 price docking. At $1/ft it is the cheapest so far and we got it at 50 cents! Good news becuse the weekly budget is already strained and a small craft warning for the next day (Sept 20th) featuring water spouts is predicted. I know what you are saying small craft warnings are nothing and worrying about waterspouts is for wimps. But we stayed an extra day to get some jobs on the boat done, really.

So my first clue that we were going to have trouble getting out this morning should have been the guy in hip waders flyfishing in 3' of water back over by the fuel pump. The problem being we draw 4 1/2' of water. We weren't stupid enough to go over to the pumps but we cleaned the bottom of the keel again at the sight of grounding #2. This time I had to dinghy over to the dock nearby and heel over the boat with a long line from the top of the mast to get it unstuck. Not our fault really we were just following instructions.

Coburg: (Sept 21st)
Had a good 4 hour downwind run here to day with little wind or swell to start with. Got the boat set up wing on wing and was going a blistering 2knots (out of a potential 6 top speed). While the kids chanted Spinnaker, Spinnaker over and over again I waited patiently and the wind came up and we were going 4+ knots most the way