Heading Out

We're packed and the Full Circle is hooked up to the van and ready to roll. Hopefully it will be ready to float and run again once we get to the Rideau Canal at Smith Falls, Canada. First stop though, is the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, NY for their annual boat show and auction. I better keep Dave's credit card in MY pocket! Since Clayton is on the St. Lawrence River in the Thousand Islands, there is always a good chance that we will be able to glimpse one of the huge Great Lake freighters that ply the waters. By tomorrow night we will hopefully be floating somewhere in the Rideau Canal, meeting up with 10 of our friends who have chartered boats. I don't know if there will be wifi up there, so stay tuned for a full report when we return.

On Top of the World

Or at least on top of the Adirondack Mountains! We took our friends Paul and Ann on a tour of the area's mountains and lakes and got a bird's eye view from the summit of Whiteface Mountain.

It was a bit hazy, but still spectacular. Lake Champlain is in the background.

Lake Placid is easily seen, and we had lunch in town (which ironically is actually located on the shore of Mirror Lake) and explored a few of the shops along main street.

This is the Adirondack High Peaks, where if you complete all 46 hiking trails you are known as a '46er'.

For the trip back down to the parking area, Dave and Ann were brave enough to go down the nature trail. It was literally breathtaking and they really had to hang on to the rails because of the wind. Well worth the trip down though, but it would be quite a trek going up.




Paul and I took the easy way down, by a 26 floor elevator and back thorough a long tunnel under the mountain.

Temps in the tunnel were 45, 66 at the summit, and 89 at the bottom and in the valley. It certainly was a great place to spend a hot day with some natural air conditioning!

YeeHaw!

John and Dave have perfected the art of the Port-a-Party...a blast from the past and traveling in style!

Bridging the Gap

Construction of the new Lake Champlain Bridge between Crown Point, New York and Chimney Point, Vermont has been amazing to watch. One of the most interesting aspects of the project has been to see the center span being made. We discovered the construction of the span when we went to launch our Bauer 12 daysailer from the public launch ramp in Port Henry.
The marina next to the ramp has been leased for the project and turned into a construction site. This is where the 402 ft. span is being made and will be brought to the bridge itself on the lake (we presume by huge barges). At anytime during the day there are people sitting in their cars at the launch ramp, watching the work force with binoculars. We have gone back several times and are astonished with how quickly it has progressed.



There is still plenty to assemble and rig, so even though the arches now meet, rumor has it that it will be sometime towards the middle to late August before it is moved and attached to the other spans. I sure hope that it is announced when they do this, so we can be there to watch. Completion of the project is slated for October of this year. Meanwhile the free ferries are still running 24 hours a day next to the bridge.

Click HERE for more detailed info on the bridge construction and to view the webcams.

Playing Hooky

It was way too hot to work on motorcycles during our latest heat wave, so Dave joined me up in the Adirondacks. The lakes were too crowded to go boating though, since everyone wanted to get wet and cool off. In a quandary to find a place to chill out, we headed to the LaChute falls. The LaChute River flows between Lake George and Lake Champlain, and there are several sets of waterfalls, since Lake Champlain is over 200 feet lower than Lake George.
We certainly wouldn't consider doing this in the spring, but now the water is tamer, although still powerful, so we had to be careful not to be swept further down the falls.

Dave, as usual, was brave enough to explore and take in the whole falls experience.
He even found a small turtle hiding in a rock crevice. What a trip it must have had getting there!
I, on the other hand, preferred the more sedate natural jacuzzi at the base.
Still up close and personal, right underneath.
The constantly flowing water sure was mesmerizing and a cool way to spend the afternoon away from the crowds.

Splashed!

Going...

Going...

Going!



It goes! The Bayliner's first sea trial went well, but we made sure we motored upwind so that we could blow back to the dock if running difficulties developed. Of course the dock on lower Lake Champlain is right next to the cable ferry to Vermont, so that was a bit unnerving. We had minimal problems and made it 'full circle' back to the launch ramp!

Full Circle

The Bayliner is almost ready for sea trials. We even floated her at the launch ramp, still on the trailer, to see if everything worked okay, since we were having problems with the shifting. We had it hooked up to the hose while running it in the driveway, with Dave going back and forth from the helm to the engine compartment trying to shift it and make adjustments, all while I am watching the propeller, yelling Forward! Neutral! Neutral! Neutral!....and no reverse, or it would stall when in reverse. We finally took a break for the night, to give the neighbors a rest from the screaming (it was hard for Dave to hear me with the engine running), and the next morning it dawned on Dave exactly what needed to be done and now it shifts fine. Sometimes you have to just walk away for awhile.

The pictures below show the inside accommodations and it has a small ice box/cooler, and sink with running water behind the helm. There is even room for a portable Coleman type stove.

Sleeping arrangements in the enclosed V-berth area are small with the port-a-potty under one of the berths.


Dave will be sleeping on the top 'shelf' and hopefully he won't roll down on me while I sleep on top of the toilet! Since we are at the age when we both have to get up during the middle of the night, we are bringing a spare port-a-potty, that will live out in the main helm/living area (in our big boat I would call it the main salon) to relieve those 3AM urges. We'll be the only 21 foot boat with two heads!

We plan on an overnight excursion to Valcour Island in Lake Champlain to see how the whole system works, before our week long Rideau Canal trip August 6th. The Rideau is a series of canals with hand operated locks that also opens up into small lakes, which will be ideal for the kayaks that we will be carrying on the hard top roof. This trip has been in the planning for a year now, and we have several other friends from here and the Hope Town Sailing Club that are joining us and renting boats in Canada. For more information on cruising the Rideau Canal click HERE.

So, why did we name the Bayliner Full Circle? Mostly because we owned another Bayliner many years ago, but also because our humble beginnings of boating together started with a small trailerable boat with minimal accommodations and very little headroom. Our first boat was a 22 foot sailboat that we actually spent a month cruising the Florida Keys on back in 1982, and another month around the Sanibel area the following year, even crossing the Okeechobee Waterway in it. We called our adventures being "young and having no sense." I guess now that we have come full circle 30 years later, we're just "old and senile and don't remember what it was like!"