July 25, 2011 Clayton, NY

I was surprised to find an unsecured wifi connection at the anchorage, although the connection is very low and very slow. Usually I sit outside doing the blog update and enjoy the beautiful morning. Today I am sitting out in a steady rain, which also is kind of pretty, at least it will be until we have to go out in it to raise the anchor and sail to Clayton.

Since it was raining, Kerry and I switched duties. I went out in the rain to raise the anchor while Kerry stayed under the canvas at the helm. It took about 10 minutes to chop the weeds off the chain and wash down the deck. We started out on the 15 mile journey about 9:10. On the way,, Lew called and said some huge storms were moving in from Lake Ontario and we should go as fast as we could. So we did. Unfortunately, we were going against a current up to 1.8 knots, so sometimes we could only go 5.2 knots. As it turned out, the storms near us dissipated, and another row of major storms went south. 

We passed a little house on a rock that looked like a house boat design Kerry has been talking about for Vermilion. She laughs about selling Excalibur and replacing her with a houseboat to keep at our dock at VYC. We would have plants on it, umbrellas tables, etc. We know the lagoons residents would love it too. J

We arrived at French Creek in Clayton, NY about noon. It is shallow and I hoped we could get Excalibur to our dock. We were able to get within feet of it, close enough for Kerry to jump off with a line. We attached lines to the dock and used the windlass and jib wench to pull the boat through the mud to the dock. We made it. I could not get the Nexus phone number for reporting back into the USA in NY to work. I finally called Ohio and got them to note that we had reported in.

Jim and Jola arrived just as we were finishing up our docking procedures. Gretchen and Lew made lunch for all of us on Windchaser, hot dogs, fruit and homemade potato salad. It was great. It was 2:00 by this time, and time for Lew’s nap. Jola walked to the Antique Boat Museum to check out the hours. It closes at 5:00 so we decided to go tomorrow.

I have been having a problem with an important pump in the sanitary system, the macerator pump. It has not been working properly. I had a rebuild kit on board, but needed to get the head pumped out empty before the repair could be made. As it turned out, there was a pump out station on the dock, about 10 feet from Excalibur. Jim, always up for a project, volunteered to help me rebuild the pump. Without going into great detail, let’s just say taking the holding tank apart to repair a macerator pump is a nasty, rather “shity” job, so to speak. But we did it and it is done. Jim is a great friend to enthusiastically help with a project like this. Thanks Jim!

Cocktails and dinner were on Excalibur. Kerry produced a great meal of beef, chicken and vegetable shish kabobs which I cooked on the grill, with plenty of advice and help from all. It was delicious. We were all ready to turn in when it was finished.