WELL, IT LOOKS LIKE WE AREN'T LEAVING UNTIL THE SPRING August 20, 2007

Continuing on from the blog before, we were still waiting for the engine to come in and Charles (E C Marine)the mechanic and Gunter (FastWater Yachts Inc.) the welder to come and do their magic. In the meantime we were still living at Doris', thanks to her generosity, while the boat is still on the hard at PCYC. I have been visiting friends, reading, painting, bicycling, babysitting, visiting family, motorcycling, practicing on the piano, playing guitar, and playing on the computer. I wanted to paint some small sailboats on two plastic wine glasses so I went to Sharon's to get help. She is a very good sketcher and water colour artist. This is a picture of one of her lillies in her garden. She also has a beautiful garden. She did the painting on the wooden chair.

This is the reflection of Sharon's ferns in her fish pond. You can see the orange streak indicating the gold fish in the water.

I went out for lunch with Joe and Michael. I taught Joe and Michael six years ago. I'm so proud of them being in fourth year at university. Each of them at a different university. Lining ourselves up to take a picture with me holding the camera was a hoot.

Sarah's cat Arie loves sleeping in her bathroom sink. He just fits. What a crazy cat!



Here comes the new Yanmar 75 motor. We hired a sign crane and raised it up from Charles' truck bed and set it down in the boat. This is Charles guiding the motor into the cock pit on the boat.

Here is Anthony in the engine room with the new motor. I took the picture from above looking down through the bottom of the cockpit. Yeahhhhhhh! the motor has arrived. Now we needed Gunter to come over to the boat to make the space in the engine room wider. The new motor is wider than the old one, shorter, lighter and thinner BUT wider so it wouldn't fit down on the motor mounts. Gunter (this is a picture of our handsome welder, Gunter) had to cut and grind the steel to make more space for the motor. This had to be done before Charles could come in and hook up the motor and the exhaust. Many thanks to Gunter for his work. He had a terrible summer cold and he still came out and worked on the boat until the motor fit into place on the motor mounts. Next it was Charles' turn to come out and hook the motor up but the exhaust system was back ordered so it took another week for it to come in and for Charles to start on the motor hook up. Thanks to Charles and his assistant David for their hard work. It was all hooked up in a couple days and by August 17th we were ready to launch after being in the boat yard for a month and two weeks. We were launched in the afternoon of a very, very windy day, 53km winds.

Here we go again being picked up by the land lift and carried to the water. It always amazes me how easily it can pick up 22 tons of steel and carry it to the water. What a machine!!

The staff at Port Credit Yacht Club, Peter and Assistants, were very kind to us and very efficient when they worked with the boat pulling it out of the water and putting it back in. Thanks to them too for a job well done.

Our friends from LSYC, Jay and Elaine had their new boat Red Lion launched at PCYC on the same day just before us.

Sooooo off we went motoring, heading for Lakeshore Yacht Club. The motor was running beautifully, so quiet. We had an wonderful motor trip down to LSYC. As we were coming in to dock a clatter started up from below. We quickly docked at the visitors dock and turned the motor off. It didn't sound like the motor, more like the cupling bearing. We don't know for sure. We have to tow the boat back to PCYC sometime this week and have it pulled out again ....... to check the bolts on the outside of the crankshaft casing, hopefully tighten them and then get put back in the water. In the meantime Anthony and I discussed the date and the fact that the boat still wasn't ready to go. We wanted to sail/motor leisurely down the St. Lawrence to the Maritimes and now.....it's the end of the summer and the boat is still not running properly. We don't want to rush down the St. Lawrence. That defeats the whole purpose of going. Soooooo we decided to stay in Toronto for the winter and head out for the Maritimes next May. I want to keep the blog going because I enjoy writing it. We really hope the rattling is minor and that we can sail down to Amherst Island for a couple weeks in the month of September. This is the first summer in 15 years that we haven't sailed our own boat in the summertime and we really missed it. We're hoping we get some sailing in before the season is over. I'll keep you up to date.