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| We'll miss our duck friends |
Wednesday and Thursday were more occupied with minor chores of cleaning the flybridge strata glass under the enclosure (Brian sucked it up and put his trust in a pair of suction grab bars Linda had purchased just for this type of work), polishing rails, vacuuming carpets, and doing laundry. Brian reviewed the procedures for maintaining the boats power steering system. He also insured the generator parts he ordered from Full Throttle Marine Service arrived at the Shelburne Shipyard. Linda restocked ships stores and later relaxed reading her mystery novel. In the evening we discussed options for continuing the voyage. Assuming we are fully fixed by Sunday, we might have enough time to see all of Canada as we intended. Weather plays a big factor on the Great Lakes, with extra travel days needed for choosing good crossing days. Going deeper into Canada, such as the Trent-Severn canal can be risky in terms of time, and having another catastrophic breakdown would jeopardize our ability to get off Lake Michigan in time to winterize the boat, and return to our regular responsibilities as planned. We can still do the Richelieu Canal to Montreal, up the Ottawa River to Ottawa, down the Rideau Canal to Kingston portion, but after that — well, it is less certain. If we are able to complete this portion on time, we could continue on to the complete the Trent-Severn and into Michigan as planned; or we could look for winterizing options on the southern (USA— Rochester, NY for example) position of Lake Ontario, or we could bring the boat back home and work on desired upgrades (the list is accumulating rapidly) during the off-season. This last option provides a sense of accomplishment by completing one of the three loops, but means some repetition will be necessary for us to accomplish the longer loop. We will make our first decision based on the success at Shelburne this weekend, and then if we are able to proceed, we will re-examine the longer term decision as we get closer to Kingston, ON. We continue to remind each other we are on God’s timeline, not our own — and as always, She has a definite sense of humor when it comes to us! Happy Birthday shout out to our son Chris and our adopted daughter Cera. Okay, we didn’t really adopt Cera, but she has been such a good friend of Chris and Nick —usually being the more sensible of the three, and sharing the same birthday as Chris, Linda started calling Cera her adopted daughter years ago. Cera has even driven the boat, and loved it. Last summer, after Linda messed up her ankle, she drove with Nick to our location to rescue Linda and allow Nick to replace Linda as crew member for Brian.
