Bay of Quinte

After over two weeks we’ve managed to travel a total distance of about 30 nautical miles. Yes, we’re living up to our unofficial slogan: “Why go fast, when you can go slow.”

After leaving Stillwater we spent many days just lazing around at a nearby anchorage called Sandy Cove. We had a few Stillwater friends drop in on us over those few days … I think they just wanted to see if we were still there.

While at Sandy Cove we watched the local Search and Rescue team practice their helicopter water recovery. Either that or they were trying to get rid of a body. If was fun to just laze around and do some reading and swimming. But by the fifth or sixth day we decide it was time to move on, so up came the anchor and off we went. But hauling up the anchor proved to be a bit of a challenge!

From Sandy Cove we sailed a whopping 10 nm to our next anchorage of Forester Island. This took us through some pretty narrow stretches where we had to share the channel with lots of motory boats, including a tourist vessel.

We dropped the hook behind Forester Island and stayed for another near-week just relaxing, reading, swimming and doing odd jobs.

BTW, our boat is home, not just to us, but to many other critters of the buggy sort. For a few days we seemed to be mayfly porn central, with lots of these dragonfly-like bugs just “doin’ it” all over Pachina Mia. But mostly there’s the spiders … lots and lots of spiders.

From Forester’s we mostly motored down towards Picton. We anchored just north of Picton Harbour for two nights, and were going to spend more nights on the hook but we got news of two families in the area that we could connect with. The first was Dylan, Phil’s son. And the other was a friend of mine from a waaaay back: Dave Rogers and his family from Whitehorse. It was great to connect with Dylan, whom I don’t think I’ve seen since he was a tiny lad. It was great to meet his family. And it was amazing to reconnect with Dave and his wife Carole and sons Henri-Georges and Charlot.

Dylan and family

The Roger’s Clan*

* Pictures by Dave & Carole

We had planned to stay only a few days in Picton, but on the fourth night the yacht club manager mentioned that they had a week rate for the mooring balls. For the price of less that five nights we could stay the whole seven… so we did!

Life is easy here in Picton. We spend most of the daytime hanging out in the lovely PEYC club house/bar. They have decent wifi, which has allowed us to make some good headway on our Waterway Guide work (we are Cruising Editors for the Waterway Guide). By 4 pm we’re sipping a beer, and having a shower. By six we’re back to our floating home on the mooring, fixing dinner and sipping more beer/wine.