End of season .... we had 5 very nice days of sailing in the islands, enjoying the changing colours among the trees, and went swimming. 

Unfortunately, the time has come to prepare the boat for her winter storage.  We will be using the next few days of sun to paint the wood, do some minor rust work and unload the boat.

While I was making coffee, I took this shot.  By the time I had the camera out, the fog had almost disappeared.

Quebec ... here we come!

Our life raft had to be serviced .. and the place was north of Quebec City.  A 6 hour drive from here (Kingston, ON).

So, we decided to make it a vacation.

And it was a great one.

Quebec City ...

St. Lawrence River images, it is where all it started!

Our friends ...

past ...

and then

 

  an me (H) in the wilderness!

 

And we had a great long hike to the top of this cliff, with a great lunch, which we had (wisely) taken along.  If you look carefully, you might see us between the trees at the drop off ...

 

 

Overall, it was a great land based vacation!  With a delightful stay in Laval at M's sister on the way back to Kingston.

August 23, 2013

It is a special day for us ....

Back in the summer of 1988 my uncle Heinz (Heinz - Joachim) came to visit us in Canada.  This was before the wall between Eastern and Western Germany came down.  It was still the time of the Cold War.

But he got permission to go to Canada to visit his nephew - me (H)!  But without his wife - Ursel!

But by shear determination and organization, he and his son (living in the West at that time) also managed to coordinate their arrival and stay with us.

We picked them up at the Mirabel airport and stayed in the airport hotel - which had a swimming pool set in a botanical garden.  We all had a swim at midnight!  A good way to start our celebration of coming together again after so many years.  He remembered that!

And then we went to Kingston.  Although we (M&H) had a very difficult time due to health issues, we took them around Kingston, Toronto and environs.

Whenever I talk to him, 2 events stayed with him until his last days.  He had been a teacher, and talking to an historian at the school across the river, this conversation stayed with him all his life.

The other one, was him of getting "lost" in the 1000 Islands at Endymion Island - just 50 yards away from the US border.  Different times then and now ....  But he made it back, worried, safely, but very exhausted.   But this memory never left him and propped up at every conversation we had over the phone since.

Here he arrives completely beat, and worried that he may have strayed in US waters.

Heinz, and if you would have!!! ... but he remembered this adventure all through his life.

He had his funeral on August 23, 2013.  Since we were not able to attend, we decided to move our boat on that date to the same place where this "incident" took place.  And in memory of him, we took our (new) dinghy around the island, the same way he had done and thought about our times together, and our past.

And upon our return to our ship we had a glass of red wine to his life.

Heinz, we will remember you as long as we live.  It was a pleasure being with you at that time, and your son, Jochen.

A few years later, my mother came to visit and we took her along the same route.

She did not row around the island as her brother did, but went into the water like a fish and could not be stopped.

And may I mentioned, I never got my hat back!!!!  I would need it now!  I have less hair!

Marleyne and I went back to see them both and Ursel a short while later when we were taking a break from our trip in the Caribbean.  We all had a nice afternoon.

Memories, by which we live by ...

H&M

Summer cruise 2013

Ha ha...ok, this picture has nothing to do with cruising....however, the heat was amazing during that 2nd week of July!  Well over 30C.  Instead of digging trenches in our backyard, the captain was dreaming of sailing on the lake and cooling off with a jump into the water!

Well ... We departed for our annual summer cruise around Lake Ontario one week later and then, the temperature changed...it felt like end of September! A stubborn and persistent high pressure system brought wonderful blue skies ... but cool weather!!!! To make a long story short, this 3 weeks cruise was the coolest ever since we have been sailing on the lake...the water temperatures dropped to 15C at times!!! In July!  We were supposed to have a full blown summer

On our to our beloved Waupoos; the wind was gorgeous, and it was a very harmonious trip...here is a picture of a Seaward 25 with a very nice American couple on board to whom Heiner strongly recommended to visit Waupoos and area. We could not resist taking this shot...

And they took ours ... we all had a slow but lovely sail.

We spent a couple of days in Waupoos, actually riding our bike for a 30 km stretch from the Waupoos marina to the South Bay Marine museum and back to the Cider estate ttp://www.countycider.com/waupoos.html ...it took a couple of hours to rest from that stint!!!!  It is a hilly country side! Luckily, it was rather cool that day and it made the trip a little more comfortable. We also had the pleasure of a visit of our friends Karen and Lindsay on board: it brought back good memories of their time on board when we were in the Caribbean!

We decided to go the inside route to Toronto and we enjoyed the trip to the Murray Canal. It was no problem to find a space at the wall for La Buena Vida ....Once again, we took our bikes and biked around the Presqu'ile Bay park and area. We had the luck of finding a road merchant selling fruits and veggies: we bought the biggest radishes ever from that place! With a cold beer, they were a delicious treat!

LA BUENA VIDA AT PRESQU'ILE 

The trip from Cobourg to Toronto, however, was a different story: we had a fast and really chilly sail with a strong north west wind...15 knots at first with gusts up to 25 and by the time we got close to Toronto, it was steady 30 with much higher gusts! Wow, we had not sailed with a triple reefed main plus reefed jib since the Caribbean! The trip of 56 miles took us just short of 11 hours!!!

We anchored on the outside of Ward's island ...it was Sunday August 5th and a long holiday weekend! The beaches were packed...and the water temperatures a tropical 17.6C!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Monday, we made our way into the islands and enjoyed its natural peacefulness, despite many more boots moored there for the night...on Monday, they all left as they had to return to work!!! We stayed!

For Marleyne's birthday, her sister was to come from "far away" Montreal to spend a couple of days with us and celebrate Marleyne's birthday. We had fun, walked a lot, drank many gin and tonics and rum, and enjoyed Toronto and the islands.

One of the attractions in Toronto, apart from visiting museums and eating very well, was to go to the Greek Danforth festival.  The streets were packed with people, and food vendors lined the sidewalks. Unfortunately, there was only a bit of Greek music to entertain us, we had expected more.

In total, we had a fun visit.  However, after a stay of 7 days in the islands we prepared the boat and the day after Liette left back for Montreal, La Buena Vida made its way back east towards Kingston. This time, unfortunately, we had absolutely no wind and had to motor the 56 miles to Cobourg, our fist stop.  We had the same condition the next day going to Presqu'ile Bay; only after we had passed the Murray Canal the wind picked up and we could sail, via some nice stops, the rest of the way back to Kingston.  And finally, the temperatures (air and water) started to warm up and as I am writing this, it looks like it is going to be very hot soon ... we will have to go back sailing and trying to recapture our summer!!!!  100 Islands her we come!

At home, we had a delayed birthday party for Marleyne with Karen and Lindsay and a great time with them on their deck.

Prinyers's cove and Prince Edward County ...

we took a few days off.  One day the water temperature read 22C, the next day 15C.  Go figure!  But I (H) went swimming, anyway. But we had a great time. Unfortunately, the wind had to be always from the directions we wanted to go to! In other words, a lot of tacking and slow progress.  But we made it for and back!

Cockpit renewal - Part 2

Almost there!  The wood is done, time to launch.  Painting the steel with Awlgrip white has to wait until we are in the water.  The yard is just too dusty to do a good job.  And we want to go sailing!!!!  Might even do that before we start with painting.

Cockpit renewal ... a back-breaking task!

After almost 30 years of teak mounted onto steel, it is time to replace many boards and to repair the damaged steel underneath.  This translates into lots of hours resting on ones knees while bending forward, plus climbing the ladder uncountable times to make things fit.

I have nice leg muscles to show for my effort ... my back, however, is less happy!

Now, the time has come to glue the new boards back into place (we used Iroko, instead of teak, similar characteristics), and to fill the remaining gaps between all the boards.  A slow job, and - as it seems, everything has to be done bent forwards without support:  a back breaking job.  And it is a very, very messy job, no matter how carefull we were.  You don't see the mess (could not take pictures, guess why!?), and you don't see all the stuff we have to sand off.  And, again, many more hours on my knees to clean things up!!!

While wood in the cockput looks great, wood on steel has it issues.  We cross our fingers that this will last another 30 years.  By this time ....?

But we are hopefull that our sailing season will start soon!

Spring maintenance

To own is to maintain! Cruising dreams are seldom made of..work! But even on the home grounds, cruising and owning a boat comes with its share of maintenance work.

We had a couple of very cold days during which we decided to tackle the "dodger issue"...we bought clear glass vinyl (gage 30) at Quinte Canvas and replaced all the 3 windows. Before doing so, however, we used the opportunity of having a windowless dodger to repair seams...what a job!

We just had installed a new door in the guest room and we used the old door as a work table: great work surface! The purchase of a walking foot for the sewing machine was a great investment: it made the job so much easier. 10 hours of work...the results are great!!!  We now have a new "16 years old" dodger!!

Martinique  ... or call us crazy?

So, we changed our mind following our entry of March30, 2013, and we DID go to Martinique to look at boats.

As we had said previously ... all Peter's fault!

Booking on short notice flights, rooms at the Montreal airport, renting a car and an appartment in Martinique had us scrambling.  But we made it!

Yes, we had a carefull look at boats, talked to the marina manager, the yard manager, people at the chandlery,  customs and immigration ... and let the decision "do we want a boat in the Caribbean or not" develop over the days during our stay.

In the end, we decided against it.

What surprised us was that we failed to experience strong "nostalgic tugs", which we had anticipated given our 2 wonderful years in the Caribbean on board of La Buena Vida.  No, these tugs were gone! 

It was nice to sit around the water, watching the boats at anchor, and enjoying life from this side of the beach.

Or to sit on the terrasse of our little appartment, looking at the see and the greenery around us.

Our "home" was enchanting and may have contributed to our decison to let the dream of having another boat in the Caribbean drift away.

The remaing few days were used to do road trips, to do hikes and have regular visits to the beaches of Cap Chevalier and Salines.

One particular hike we were looking forward to was walking the Canal de Esclave (also called Canal de Beauregard) close to St. Pierre.   Imagine walking along a very narrow brick wall hugging the mountainside, with very steep dropoffs to one side (some few hundred feet at places).  If you are afraid of heights, this is not a place to visit!.  And if you want to look at the scenery, you better stop ... so you can enjoy the surrounds!  Unless you are suicidal!

 

Too cool off again, we returned to the beaches, or were sitting in the shade at a small restaurant, enjoying the view (and the food and a cool beer!).

In the end, we had to bid a farewell to the island.  Fortunately, back home we were greeted with warm weather - the cold and grey April had ended during our abscence, and we were welcome with summer weather back home.  Ready to work on La Buena Vida!

Martinique - here we come (again)!!!!

Somewhat unexpected on our part ... but we are going to fly out to Martinique/Le Marin for  a week.  What can we say?

It is all Peter's (Aquataurus) fault!!!

Ok, call us crazy!

With images like this on our mind ....  who does not want to go back???

So, with winter still here in Kingston, we were looking for ways out to shorten the future winter months.

We thought about one ... buying another (!!!) boat!  And keep this one in the Caribbean.

How crazy is that?  Well, our friends thought that was a great idea.  Not crazy at all!!!!

Thanks guys!

We started to look around and to put out some feelers.  No shortage of finding boats.  We were looking in the 30+' range. There were many.  Any unused ones for prolonged period of time, we discarded.  But still ...

This one might even have worked for us:  http://www.apolloduck.com/advert.phtml?id=288756

And the price was negotiable.

But hang on!  This would not leave us room for doing land travels, as we had wanted to do when we returned from our last 2 year stint down south.

Let's back track, and rethink this proposal for a while.

And how about chartering a boat (mid 30s) for 1 or 2 months during the winter, rather than buying one?  It would be an alternative and would work for us.  We are looking in this direction .... any suggestions????

In the meantime, we are waiting for spring ... and 2 days later ... for summer to arrive.  We are ready for another season with LBV on the Lake.

Adios Yucatan!

And to add to our Yucatan experience, there was the music and the dances! All the time, everywhere, for people of all ages, local and tourists! Viva la musica! Viva Merida!

You can se it all live on this VIDEO: http://youtu.be/HLBnpN0qG10

This photo was taken as we were sipping our last beers in a bar from Merida...after the big Carnaval parade!

                                                                   Adios Mexico!

Last days in Merida

The end of our week in Merida was more relaxed but the heat index was rising...36C in the afternoon! Luckily, the humidity is not as high here as in Cancun but 36C is 36C!!!!

We still had to explore the Merida market and found it during one of those sweltering afternoon...We have seen many markets during our travel in the Caribbean but this one was really very special. First its huge size! but also the produces! it looks so chaotic but it is a really neat place to be!!! We bought super large avocados, juicy mangos and had we been on our sailboat, we could have loaded the ship with amazing stuff!

Walking by the "fish" department, we notice small kiosks serving seafood ceviche; we had a large portion of fresh shrimps in tomato juice with crackers...that's the way they serve shrimps there.

And then we found out that it was Carnaval!!!! Of course, we wanted to experience that.  That is when Merida started to transform itself, with its street being closed for a part of the afternoon, seats and gates installed along the main streets for the parade, and with an equal influx of tourists and sellers of all kinds.

The first parade we saw was the one for pre-school children .... Mayan people are short with the average adult being 1,40m...so you can imagine how small these ninos of 3 to 6 years of age were !!! Difficult to see them in a parade...but we caught them in the hour before the parade when their proud parents were walking with them to the start line...

Oh! by the way, what this little girl in the bottom right picture is eating is called a "marquesitas": a thin pancake or crêpe filled with gouda cheese or with Nutella!!! If you wish to see how they are made, check out the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2vOXybZ0LQ and you will appreciate that to make them when it is so hot outside must be quite taxing!!!!

Excursion from Merida to Uxmal

Having visited Tulum and Chichen Itza, we were wondering if a visit to Uxmal site would bring anything else to our experience and understanding of Mayan culture...but stunning photos of the Uxmal site made us opt for a visit to yet another Mayan archeological site. We left Merida with the ADO bus and followed the Puuc route south of Merida to Uxmal.

Not only is Uxmal set in a hilly region (small hills but which nevertheless offer a relief of the very flat landscape of Yucatan), but its structures are very well preserved and very ornamented.

In this panoramic view, one can appreciate the atmosphere of the site. In the far, is the Temple fo the Sorcerer, dominating the valley.  This temple is so imposing by the sheer size of its structure and by its smaller temple on top, symbolizing a gigantic mask of the rain god Chaac. It is 19 ft x 19 ft but stands out wonderfully against the almost smooth pyramide structure (115 ft high)!

 

The Birds' Quadrangle depicted in the above panoramic shot conveys the grandor of the Uxmal site.The Birds ' quadrangle was so named because birds, mainly macaws, were found to ornate its western side! While birds are alluded as malefic animals due to the damage inflicted to mais culture, the macaw, on the other hand, symbolizes the Sun God.

Below is the Governor's Palace, which is magnificently decorated.Its foundations were laid out in accordance with the apparent east-west movement of the sun!
 

Its ornementation comprises 103 masks of the rain god Chaac along the lenght of the frieze!

Also striking is the undulating body of a snake which continues all along the structure, interpersed with geometrical , mathematical and natural elements. Such ornementation was not sen in Tulum or Chichen Itza.

One of the features of Uxmal that we like so much is the "natural" setting in which the structures are set. For example, it was quite stunning to see the South Group also referred to as Dovecote (so named because of its crenellations) arising from the jungle...and being able to find your way to it!