Before leaving Montreal it costs $50 in charts to cover the cruise from Montreal, up the St. Lawrence to Sorel and then down the Riviere Richelieu to the US border where my US charts take over. After a comfortable cruise down the Richelieu and a few locks, we exit Quebec at last and arrive in Lake Champlain with a quick visit from the friendliest US Customs team ever. Crossing the border Vermont is on the left and NY on the right. Shouldn't they both be on the left? At last I can again have the luxury of constant position on a moving map display using FREE charts with my FREE nav program and my $40 GPS receiver. Life is good. We are easing back into granite and the terrain is acquiring a more vertical aspect. Lake Champlain is huge with lots of islands, bays and coves. A good thing too because the wind can be quite strong and a good hidey-hole is needed for a comfortable night. Great sailing conditions here dictate the sailboat to be the vessel of choice by a long way. They do have an unusual style of sailing in that they never, ever reef or furl a sail. When the wind gets strong they simply douse the main and sail on the Genny. I guess modern design and a huge rudder lets them get away with that. As often as possible we avoid marinas and find ourselves anchored in the company of sailboats every night (Sailboats tend to anchor out and power boats tend to go into marinas.). They are Canadian boats almost exclusively. Quebec boats to be even more exact. Apparently they prefer Lake Champlain to Montreal Harbor. Quebecers afloat and ashore fly flags according to their political leaning; Canadian or Canadian plus Quebec or Quebec alone. That way you don't have to guess their allegiance. Simple. One evening I needed to check the marine forecast on the internet and found the computer had died. The power switch did nothing. The external power module had no effect. Inert as a brick. FUBAR to the max. So here I was in the middle of Lake Champlain with no charts and no GPS. Surrounded by Frogs! Now I would have to get to the nearest marina having paper charts in stock and it would be old-fashioned navigation with compass, clock, and eyeball bearings. Not too bad, really. I used to teach this stuff years ago. It's kind of like my previous passion, archery, where you can achieve great accuracy using ancient methods. The computer problem turned out to be power supply. I was able to resurrect it and seem to have lost no files except the CMOS had to be reset. Everything back to normal including the electronic navigation. Allah Akbar! Praise Buddha! Thank God! Did I leave anyone out? At the south end of Lake Champlain, guess what. More locks. At the first lock we stop at Whitehall, a beautiful village with many nice Victorian houses. This used to be called Skenesborough and claims to be the birth place of the US Navy in 1776. Their initial battle at Valcour Island in Lake Champlain (where we had happened to overnight) was lost but resulted in delaying the red coats so much that they retreated north to winter rather than advancing south and that gave the good guys several months respite. Now you know. We moored to the town sea wall (canal wall) and walked a couple of blocks to find a grocery store. No store. Inquiring at another business, the shop owner told us the grocery is located ½ mile away but rather than explain the directions, he said it was easier to just drive us there in his car. Which he did! This is NY? We have decided to end this year's cruise in the Albany/Troy area and put the boat to bed for the winter. Next year we plan to cruise the 365 miles of the Eric Canal. So, we may be home near the end of August. In that case, this will be the last report of a really fantastic cruise. We hope that these notes have helped you enjoy a bit of it with us.
Kenny and Crew (Barbara, sweethearts for over 45 years)
