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| This is the track for the entire cruise, over half was singlehanded. The series of blogs begins here, below. |
Two Great Lakes and a Great Canal, May 27–May 31, 2011
Jim Clark and Jack VanArsdale arrived Friday evening and we
stowed our gear, a couple days' provisions, and made sure all was ready for our
night sail from Erie, PA to Port Colborne, ON, about 60nm across Lake Erie to
the southern end of the Welland Canal.
Our eventual destination for the
week was Toronto. The weather forecast was for a less than 10
knot breeze from the NE, just the direction we were headed. Fortunately, the waves were forecast to be
less than two feet or rather calm. Since
Kelly IV is now a full-time cruising sailboat, she is focused on moving on to
the next port as much as she is on sailing.
Since we were all eager to get moving, we completed the last
minute project of securing the dinghy with two PVC pipes across the forward and
after lifting eyes. These two pipes
would prevent the lifting eyes from pulling inward towards each other and
possibly distorting the
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| CaptMurph, Jack, Jim |
inner sidewalls of the dinghy. Once this last project was completed we
raised the dinghy into the stern davits, tied off the two small spring lines
for the dinghy and took a photo of the crew just before departure.
By this time it was 11pm.
What the weather forecast did NOT say was that we'd experience
significant fog for the entire trip, especially for the first several miles as
we left Presque Isle Bay and pressed forward through the channel. As luck would have it, we had to share the
channel with a large dredging vessel headed into the Bay, as we were finding
our foggy way out. We swapped single
horn blasts to confirm we'd pass port to port, then each of us disappeared his
own direction into the inky fog.
Frankly, if we did not have the new radar, we would have
delayed our departure. Visibility was
well under a quarter mile and the lights on the aids to navigation were the
only things visible at that range. Given
the fog and darkness, we couldn't even make out the US Coast Guard Station less
than 100 yards from us as we passed it by.
We departed at night so we'd arrive the next day in full daylight.
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| Jim Clark |
It is my very strong preference to arrive at
our destinations in daylight, especially those that I have not been to recently
or ever. With the new radar telling us we
had nothing except the land behind us, we motored off in to the wind and darkness.
Our watch schedule had me wrapping up my watch at midnight
so Jim began his watch at that time.
Jack had gone to his bunk soon after we cleared the channel, since he'd
have to be up and alert by 2am for his own watch. My preferred watch schedule for a 3 man crew
is for 3 hour watches from 6am through midnight, then 2 hour watches from
midnight until 6am. This gives the off
watch 4 to 6 hours to rest or sleep and only a 2 hour watch during the wee
hours of the morning when it is most difficult to remain awake and alert. I had taken a nap during the afternoon while
waiting for Jim and Jack to show up, so I found myself wide awake and enjoying
Jim's company as he steered us through the small but quite bouncy waves and
into the teeth of the northeasterly breeze.
With the fog and dark we couldn't see the stars or even the
water very far from Kelly, but the radar assured us there was no one nearby as
we gradually ticked off the miles towards Colborne. Jack came on watch at his appointed time and
Jim went below to enjoy a well-earned rest.
Unfortunately, we discovered that my efforts to seal the forward
overhead hatch had failed as water was leaking profusely into the aft end of
the v-berth, soaking the small cushion that covered the space between the port
and starboard sides of the aft or “head” end of the berth, assuming you would
place your feet into the pointy end at the forward end of the berth. Thankfully that seemed the extent of the
damage, so we directed the leaking water off the berth and directly into the
bilge using a small tarp. The second
berth in the main cabin was still open so Jim was able to bunk there.
Instead, Jim decided to keep Jack company and the two stayed
in the cockpit while I caught some rest before my watch began at 4am. By the time I woke up, Jim had decided to get
some rest himself and was climbing into the port-side main cabin berth for the
night. Jack also went below for some
well-earned rest and I had the cockpit, fog and darkness to myself. Fortunately, Kelly would hold her course
pretty well when I locked the wheel, so I would do that regularly and stand
above the bimini and dodger for a 360* look around. Of course, with the very limited visibility,
there was nothing to see, so the radar was very important.
Dawn came early, but not the ability to see anything. The dark gradually went away so that by
4:30am an even light gray made the small waves and water around us visible, but
only for some small distance from Kelly IV, maybe a couple hundred yards or
so. The small breeze was even less by
now, so the waves were disappearing to almost nothing. This meant that no more water was forcing its
way through the leaky forward hatch and things were already beginning to dry up
in the v-berth.
Suddenly, I noticed a radar target NW of us and about 3.5
nautical miles away. Since we were
moving along our own course to the NE, it was important to allow for our own
movement as we determined our Closest Point of Approach (CPA). At first it seemed as though the target was
not moving, then it appeared to be moving very slowly to the SW. It finally dawned on me that the target was
probably not moving, but rather we were moving past the target. The radar image of the target seemed large to
me, so my assumption was that we were passing a freighter that was at anchor
for the night.
Jack prepared a great breakfast of hot tea, coffee, mocha
with bananas and hot fruit turnovers of raspberry and cherry. A few hours later we spotted another radar
target, when Kelly was just 5 miles from Port Colborne. This radar target was on the screen at a
position about 4nm away NNE of Kelly.
Like the previous target, this one remained stationary as we passed it
by. This target was in the designated
anchorage just south of Port Colborne, so it made sense that it was
stationary. Our closest approach of this
target was 1.5nm, but even then, we never saw it visually.
As we approached the coastline, we first saw it on radar,
but soon could make out the larger buildings and trees. The fog was much thinner and easier to see
through near the coast, so piloting into the
marina at Port Colborne was a very
simple matter. We checked into Canada
Customs and were legally permitted to raise our Canada Courtesy Flag on our
starboard spreader.
Jack and Jim both brought food, so we only needed some eggs
& pretzels from the grocery store in Colborne. A phone call to the Seaway Administration
told us that if we were at the Colborne dock phone before 5am, then we might
have a good chance of moving quickly through the Welland with minimal delays.
We accepted the challenge and were up at 4:15am, slipped our
lines from the marina and were on the Seaway phone by 5am. They told us to move to the first lift bridge
and lock so we were
off! The lift bridge
is a girder bridge with two large towers at each end of the bridge. Before 5:30am, the operator rang his sirens
to begin our trek through the Welland, and to clear traffic (there wasn't any
at this hour on a Sunday morning!) then the entire bridge span rose straight up
climbing the two towers until it was well over the height of our mast (about 45
feet), creating a clearance over the water of maybe 75 feet. We weren't permitted to use our sails at all
so the sail was under its cover for the entire day.
We motored into the first lock which lowered us about 4 to 5
feet, a leveling lock. The rest of the
locks, seven more, would drop us approximately 45 feet at each lock for a total
drop of almost 350 feet! It was great to
have Jim and Jack to help out as it made it possible for me to steer Kelly into place at each lock, while Jack would get the bow line and Jim the
stern line
from the lock attendants. Then we'd push
on our boat hooks if we drifted to close to the wall, or pull on the lines if
we found ourselves drifting to far away from the wall. It was quite the experience and all the
personnel at the locks were very friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. We had no trouble at all and cleared
through
all the locks without a hitch. We did
pass a few large freighters as they made their way south and we pressed
northward,
but there was plenty of room for us to move to the edge of the
channel. On a couple occasions, Kelly
had to wait a few minutes, but we merely turned lazy circles at the side of the
channel until the Seaway radio told us they were ready for us to continue on
our way.
Our passage through the Welland may have been one of the
quickest for a small recreational vessel. We
were through the entire canal, all 8 locks, in 6 hours, start to finish.
Once clear of Port Weller at the Lake Ontario end, we
steered due west for Port Dalhousie, the nearest Canadian port with depth for a
sailboat.
Dalhousie proved to be a bit
of a tourist town, and they were very boater friendly, with many transient
slips along the seawall at the town park.
A walking harbormaster came over soon after we tied up and signed us up
for the night. He had his entire office
in his backpack so the paperwork was all done in a few minutes. We took a short walk through the town, ogled
the sailboats and powerboats tied up, and had a drink at a local
establishment. We decided to have dinner
on board as the menu for a Sunday evening was less enticing than our own
provisions.
The forecast for Monday was calm and the trip across Lake
Ontario proved to be one of the calmest rides we've ever taken. The waters were “oily”
flat without the
smallest of ripples for much of the trip.
We also had extremely thick fog, so the radar and fog signals were very
important for the entire trip. We passed
a very large freighter, a small fishing boat and a small sailboat, and saw none
of them except for a very brief glimpse of the sailboat when we closed to
within ¾ nm.
It wasn't until we were about four miles from Toronto that
we could make out the 1800 feet tall CN Tower.
Gradually the city skyline
came to us through the mist and we made an
uneventful landing among the islands of Toronto's Inner Harbour.
