Just Another Story to Tell
Our plan for the weekend is to get this boat home over the course of three days. 300 nautical miles, 3 days, older electronics, never driven her for more than half an hour, never docked her….ya know, what could go wrong?! Right?! So today, we found out…
Along the whole planning stage, we answer every “what will you do in bad weather” question with the answer that we just won’t go out in bad weather–we’ll try to stay on top of it blowing up–and we’ll stay hunkered down. It is our plan exactly. Except for this weekend. This weekend was a push and we knew we were going to rely on perfect weather to pull it off. So we were thrilled when the forecast the last couple of days has called for calm seas, barely any wind, and few rain showers in our path. We were ecstatic this morning when we woke up and the sun was shining and the water was flat. Everything was working out exactly according to plan.
Mike did a great job getting her out of the harbor and we were cruising along in no time. The sun was shining and the water was flat. It seemed that our plan was working out perfectly when all of a sudden we hit a small patch of dense fog. We slowed down and motored through it, no problem. I checked my visibility app and it showed some fog off in the distance, but not much near us. It was a slight setback, but seemed to be past us, so we carried on.
Soon, though, there was more of this dense fog and, just as we rounded the last of the islands and headed out into the big Bay, we realized we couldn’t see a thing. FOG! FOG EVERYWHERE! I quick looked at my app again and realized that the timeline doesn’t automatically update, but instead, the user actually has to manually move the slidebar to the appropriate time to see the forecasted visibility. This was bad, very bad. Fog was creeping in and fast. It looked to cover our whole route that we’d planned for the day, and possibly the whole weekend. We had quick discussions as we sat at idle….. Motor back to the islands and attempt to anchor (which of course, we’ve NEVER done before!!)? Turn around and head about two hours back to the marina, tail between our legs? Push on regardless of the forecast?
The yellow squiggle is the route we followed while debating what we should do. We puttered around and finally decided that we needed to head back to the marina we had just come out of to hunker down and do some more research about the weather for the weekend. I discussed driving back home in a rental car. We mentioned missing another day of work on Tuesday. We thought about what pushing on through the fog could bring our way. Ultimately, I decided we needed lunch. While I was down making sandwiches, I realized our fridge wasn’t cooling. Ya know, just another snaffu to add to our busy day… Turned out Mike fixed that no problem, and he also realized that the original radar put into the boat back in 1991 was still functioning pretty good. We had some more discussion over lunch and decided to alter our original destination and keep moving forward, closer to shore, bit by bit, and see how far we could get.
This picture gives you an idea of the bright sunshine and clear skies that surrounded us after we chose to push on (notice these are to the left, or port, in the picture). It also gives you a taste of the heavy fog that was surrounding the area, just waiting to engulf our boat (located to the right, or starboard, of the picture are thick white clouds sitting right on top of the water). We made some headway before we got to those clouds, but they eventually caught up to us. We tried to remember everything we’d read about driving in fog, finding a marina, reading the radar and gps….ya know, the basics of boating, but it was still quite a challenging day. I guess some days are like that when you’re on a boat…
Finally, after about 6 hours, we decided to stop at a marina. It was a bit of a harrowing experience, seeing this giant cliff come out of the clouds and driving straight at it, trusting my cell phone navigation app to protect us from crashing right into the granite shore. We motored slowly towards the entrance to the marina, searching for a red buoy (stay away from this), looking for dock B (park here), and hoping to stay away from all hard objects. All of a sudden, a big lighthouse and a breakwall (with the red buoy) were right in front of us. We navigated around in time and headed toward where the dock hands said to get fuel. I was never so thankful to fie off and fill up on diesel. After we were on the dock and looking back out at the fog, it was hard to believe we were actually out in the water, on our maiden voyage, in fog like that.
I guess paying this much for fuel will get to be pretty normal, but that sure is hard to believe. Colin had the hardest time with the total, I think!!
I can’t believe how CLEAR and BEAUTIFUL the water is in the harbor!
They’re so happy to be off the boat, out of the fog, and in for the night!!
Once we got to our slip, we couldn’t believe just how foggy it was out there. Whew!! It felt good to sit back and relax. I’m not quite sure what tomorrow will bring, but today sure was quite an adventure!! Hopefully we’ll make it home by June!!
Here is our view–thankful to be on the other side of the lighthouse and tied up tight!
Apparently this area is gorgeous with all kinds of granite bluffs, walking trails, views of the Georgian Bay, and the shape of a Lion’s Head in one of the cliffs. Sure couldn’t see any of that today. #findthelionshead was good for a laugh, though!!
What a bummer to stay in a dark sky park but be surrounded by fog!! Maybe we’ll be back someday with better weather…
Just another story to tell!! INNTW!
There she is, docked and ready for new adventures tomorrow.
