Day 6 - Rinse and Repeat
I managed to talk myself out of the V-Berth around 8am. We heeded the call of shore coffee. There is a cute coffee truck here at the state park. I have always loved her theming and her coffee has always been good. What a perk at a state park; and it’s right here at our beach. It’s also a good way to support locals. She used to have limited hours, but happy to see she is here 7 days a week until mid-day now.
We sat ashore with Kona and drank our coffee. I got my Duolingo done and we came back to Ciara to settle in for the day. We had an annoying leak coming from the fresh water pump on the head so Captain tackled that while I wrote my log. I am having issues with uploading photos and so my logs may be delayed here and there but I am keeping this log daily. The log has proven to be very useful for us and it is good to record the ins and outs of not only our life aboard Ciara but what we are currently experiencing in the Great Lakes so other sailors can take note. I know how hard it is to find information on these sailing grounds. So even if the publish dates are delayed, they will be coming! We spoke at length today with the sailors aboard the other blue hulled sailboat (which I again failed at getting their names or their boats name). They are going to the North Channel this summer, in August, after we are there. I hope this log serves many and can guide to current conditions in anchorages as well as tips. We are only a text or comment away!
We finished up breakfast and I did the dishes. We are nearing a week on using our fridge/ice box system. We have never been able to keep our big ice blocks this long. It seems silly to have such an empty freezer whose biggest function is to make either ice blocks or ice cubes. Captain had mentioned moving everything into the freezer and not using the ice box but we then end up with no space for making the much-needed ice cubes (we drink a lot of water, and those G&T’s need ice too!) and an overloaded freezer. Now with less food things seem to be working really well. The freezer can keep the old Jose Cuervo bottles we use for ice blocks frozen enough in rotation for big ice that the ice box is acting like a perfect fridge. My next battle was the frost build up we get in the freezer. I could see it already happening. Historically this means we have to do a full defrost which was very hard on the food and takes a lot of energy to bring everything back down to freezing again. Once we lose the rhythm of keeping things cold, it goes down fast. I discovered I can take some of our boiling water and put it on a wash cloth. Carefully wash down the cooling coil and keep that frost from getting out of control. I dry it off and the cooling element is acting as efficiently as ever!
We decided to go for a long walk again. This time in reverse of yesterday. This allowed us to go smelling the lilacs at the lighthouse again and finding a bit more trail. We stumbled upon the nature center and learned there used to be a ski jump here. All these years here and we keep finding all the joys of this park. The theater was now the last part of our hike and there was a dress rehearsal going on. Fine to watch, just no photographing. Makes good sense. Looks like a fun show.
The rest of the day we read our books. I re-learned my standard 3x3 Rubik’s cube and committed that party trick to memory. Practiced a little trumpet. Kona found her tennis ball and was walking around the deck with the body language of “I just know there is more to this then just having my ball.” I pulled out her pup plank and all the sudden she jumped in her boat and her body language said “Yes, That’s it!!” We played ball off the boat all afternoon.
Late afternoon a beautiful ,and obviously hand-crafted, kayak came out to visit. David was curious to say hi and we were just as curious to hear of his adventures. We made a dinner of spaghetti tonight with our homemade freeze-dried sauce. It was delicious. We took Kona for her last shore leave well before dark and stopped at David and his new bride, Bridget’s, campsite. Neat folks. I think we inspired them. I hope they take up sailing. It’s a whole new adventure! Their tales of kayaking great distances also had me dreaming of nights under the stars and different kinds of adventures.
We got back to the boat in time for Taps, so I have played it twice now. Thankful the winds are high and no one can really hear me yet. With the winds, we can sit on deck just behind the pilot house and be protected from the vast majority of it, so we sat down at dusk hoping to see the northern lights. The forecast was as best as it could have been. The moon didn’t set until 1am and there is considerable haze from the Canadian fires that we called it quits around 11. Proud to not have taken a nap today, and so thankful to have been able to have such a long day that seemed to melt from one activity to another without haste or pressure. It is quite obvious we needed some down time to just get Ciara all settled and make sure everything is in working order before we head off. We also needed to heave some lines, do lots of squats and tucks and generally get our sea legs back. The weather is really going to blow tomorrow so we will stay one more day and then we are looking to head East.
