Monday, July 3, 2003 Tobermory

It was a beautiful quiet morning. The normally bustling harbor was strangely quiet and drenched in sunshine. I took some time to enjoy the moment. It won't be this way long. I remembered later that this is Monday, and it was much quieter than yesterday.

I had this huge scare this morning. All my blog pictures were gone and replaced with HTML code. I rebooted the computer, reloaded this and that, but still no pictures. Of course I turned to Google for an answer. It seems like there is a < > button in Blogspot.com that controls this. So when I click it I get this warning asking if I am sure I want to do this and warning that I could lose my data. Like any brave captain, I closed my eyes and clicked the button. The pictures reappeared!

Our neighbor Pat sent some more pictures from Kerry's garden. Kerry really misses the beauty of her early summer garden. When we return in August everything is past its peak. She wondered if we should leave a bit later in the summer so she could enjoy her garden a little more. 

Carla sent a dock attendant over to check our power. We were hooked to a 110 plug, He located the circuit breaker and flipped it on. But it kept tripping even though no power was being used by Annie, other than the battery charger. So, with a combination of us moving Annie forward in the dock and a second 50' 30 amp cord we were able to reach a 30 amp circuit on the dock down from us. Problem solved. I went back to finishing my second cup of coffee on the top deck. The harbor was waking up. 

I assembled the kayak and started making ice. I had to stop the ice making as we had no room in the freezer for additional ice. This picture shows the way Kerry likes to arrange her top deck. We won't see this view for awhile. Our kayak will be occupying about 1/3 of the space. She is never happy with that look. You can see our little yellow kayak on the dock near Annie in the second picture.

Speaking about the Princess, she got up at 11:00 with a big headache. She knew she needed to get moving with laundry and shopping to do, so up and at 'em. We had cereal and fruit for breakfast, then headed off for laundry, showers and shopping. We used a bike to carry the bags of laundry. We rode to Jane Zaharias's cottage to snap some pictures of it for her. She has not been able to get up here for several years. Here is a view of Big Tub Harbor from her porch deck. A cruise ship was visiting today.

While shopping we bumped into Marianna and we agreed to dinner at 6:00 at the Princess Hotel. Back at Annie I spent some time erasing proof of my slamming into a white dock pole from Annie's black rub rails. It was hard! It took acetone and rub rail cleaner to make the white go away.

I do have one big decision to make. The lock knob on our back door has suddenly developed a lot of play in it, about 1/4 turn. Should I try and take it off before it possibly comes completely loose, or wait and see what happens? Once when I opened one of the side door locks for a repair a piece fell into the door frame never to be seen again. At home I would consult on this decision with Jimbo. Instead, I sent an information request to the Nordic Tug Owners Group.

Dinner at the Princess Hotel was not so good. Our pizza had a cardboard type crust. Peter's fish was very bland and most of Marianna's salad was tomatoes which were so hard she did not want to eat them. Fortunately drinks and cigars on Annie afterwards were very good. Much of the conversation was about Starlink. Kerry and Marianna think, believe it or not, that Peter and I should each buy our own system. Actually only one of us needs one as the range is excellent and would reach both boats. And Nate has one he will lend me. A boat next to Peter is sprouting a Starlink antenna. We have not yet seen as many as we expected to see, but we are not in the North Channel yet.

Peter and I picked out a new anchorage to try tomorrow, Deadbolt Island, which is on the very western end of the Georgian Bay. We'll leave at 8:00 and take a slight detour around Flowerpot Island to sight see. It's about 50 miles to Deadbolt. Hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans and one veggie burger are on the agenda for the 4th of July.