The storm was passing through and while we were glad that we were safe within the marina we were anxious to continue our journey back home. The longer we stayed in Kingston the longer our trips between marinas would be. We were debating leaving today which would have given us a short trip to Picton or Hay Bay. And then the next day would be either Trenton or Presquile. And third day would be back to Cobourg. We were taking the Northern route since we were a bit worried about how rough the Southern route could be with the weather. But these plans were quickly discarded all thanks to a Hunter sailboat.

As we were preparing to leave. OK, I probably should say, as I was preparing to leave and working on convincing Lori that even though it was windy we could leave. We noticed a Hunter sailboat heading in to dock. It was coming in on the other side of our dock and we decided to go give them a hand. We were in E6 and he was coming into E9.

Everything seemed fine but they were in the channel between the last dock and the rock wall along the shore.  The wind was coming in strong from the South pushing towards shore. As he makes the sharp right turn into his slip his stern was pushed too far towards shore and we hear a soul crushing thump and the boat bucked. We hear the engine RPMs kick up as he tries to pull it back off and again another double thump and the boat hits the rocks again. But he managed to reverse back away from the shore and was now trying to turn into the wind toward the dock. Fortunately the dock was now lined with about five other people and lines were thrown from the boat to us and we struggled to pull the boat in, but we eventually had the boat into the slip. Lori and I looked at each other and didn’t have to say a word, we went to the office and purchased another night at Kingston. Later on the owner dived in the water to check the damage but said it looked good. Phew!

Here comes the rain

The weather was passing over us as we expected today and now it brought on heavy rain. And now we discovered another issue with the boat, the port lights leak!

We have Lewmar aluminum port lights with these plastic rotating dogs that press the window against the seal on the other side. But they were filling up with water and dripping into boat. Doesn’t look too bad from this pic, but every window was leaking! We started putting towels out to soak up the water. By the next morning we had this wet muggy mess in the boat.

The previous owner warned us that he always put a bucket underneath the solar vent in the forward hatch to catch the drips. But we had no idea that all of the windows leaked!

We should have been miserable, we were stuck in Kingston, everything was damp and we were fretting about the new expense of having to fix all of the windows and we had to go outside through the rain to use the bathroom! But we were still all in good spirits, the boat is our happy place even when bad things happen.

And Lori had a chance to label our clutches so we can quickly figure out what each one does! This was very useful tonight. I woke up at 3am to the sound of our spinaker halyard clanging. The wind had picked up again, Windfinder showing 22 knots but feels much stronger. I was able to quickly find the right clutch for the spinaker halyard, tighten it up and went right back to sleep.