June 24, 2011 Dunkirk Yacht Club, Dunkirk NY

Last year when we visited the DYC they encouraged us to come back on a Friday to join their every Friday evening party. This year we did that. For $5 per person and a dish to share you can have all the food and drink you need, or in some cases, more than you need! They had a complete bar available and a keg with very cold draft beer - yum! There are several sailors in this club who have sailed to the Bahamas, Black Sea, etc., and it was very interesting speaking to them. After the party we had coffee and Rosemary's cookies on Windchaser. We finished the evening with a round of Left, Right and Center (a dice game). Kerry won $4 of quarters. Quarters are like gold to cruisers because they mean clean laundry!

The DYC is built on stilts over the water. Flooring is like a deck with gaps between boards. When you look down, as in the picture of my feet in the shower, you see the green sea. It is rather neat. Plus, the first nights docking is free.

We left Erie at 8:45 and arrived here at 2:30, so it took us a little less than 6 hours to cover the 41.6 miles. Having a following sea of 3 to 5' waves and winds around 17 knots with higher gusts sure moves on along. We had rain for about 2 hours of the voyage. Since the rain and wind were behind us I had all my foul weather gear on, as Excalibur is open to the weather in the rear and it was rather wet for awhile. No big storms though. Other than a lot of side to side rolling, the trip was uneventful except when the jib sheet wrapped around the spinnaker poll. I yelled down to Kerry that I was going up forward to unwrap it (I always tell her when I leave the cockpit in rough weather). Her advise to the captain was that if I kept the slack out of the jib sheet it would not wrap! :-)

Speed was not an issue as we were usually in the mid to high 7 knots and occasionally in the 8's. We used motors and had a little of the jib open for power and stability. Only ran the engine at 2800 rpm's.

It has rained so much that I have had trouble with the canvas getting saturated with water and dripping through in spots, especially where it drips off the solar panels. I have some water proofing spray that really works. It needs to be applied on a sunny warm day though, which seems to be a problem.

We were sorry to leave Finnbar and Brillig at Erie yesterday. It's always a little sad when your fellow cruisers leave. Each person adds so much to the trip and experience. They stayed in Erie rather than try to go against the wind and seas back to Ashtabula. They made a good decision.

We hope to get to Port Colborne today. There is a small craft advisory in effect with the same winds and seas as yesterday if we cross now. It would be a rough trip with wind and seas on the beam rather than following. It's only 24 miles so we hope we can wait until afternoon and have a calmer voyage. I made a pot of Traverse City Cherry coffee, our favorite, and am now waiting for Lew and Gretchen to pop out and share it with me.

Once we enter Canada the blog posts will become irregular as we will have to rely on WiFi. Verizon only has a Canada data plan that allows 200 mb of data, which is very little for a month.