The image of sailing in a warm breeze with the sun gently bathing bikini clad beauties lounging on the foredeck listening to sailing songs and sipping on margaritas while reading romance novels may have occurred on someone’s sailboat, but I must confess rarely seems to happen on mine….. However, I keep bringing up these images when I am trying to convince my wife to sail across the lake for a weekend sailing getaway.
The forecast for the August long weekend 2020 look perfect. Sunshine all weekend, gentle breeze of 8 knots coming from the West, perfect conditions to sail right across the lake to Port Dalhousie. It was the summer of the pandemic but the number of cases had dropped dramatically and things were back almost to normal. Sarah, our daughter and her boyfriend Ryan agreed house sit to look after the dogs and cats. We would leave the house on Friday night, spend the night on the boat at Port credit Yacht Club, and then sail across the lake in the morning, arriving in the early afternoon.
The plan went as expected and we left the house on Friday night and spent the night on the sailboat at the Port credit yacht club. We then sailed across the lake to Port Dalhousie on Saturday morning and arrived in the early afternoon. The plan was to have a nice dinner at the boat on Saturday. We had booked a tour in the wine district for Sunday afternoon and we would plan to have a romantic dinner in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Sunday night. We would then have a pleasant sail back to Port credit yacht club on the Monday.
There was very light winds on Saturday and we motored most of the way across the lake. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, just as I had imagined this would be. It was perfect. When we arrived at Fort Dalhousie, we tied up the boat. I went for a run through the lovely town getting back just in time to prepare dinner. We had salmon cooked in white wine sauce, roasted asparagus, and Basmatti Rice. It was perfect. It felt so great to be alive.
The salmon cooked to perfection
Dinner in paradise
The next morning it was raining. I turned on the VHF radio and learned that there was a small craft warning on western lake Ontario and the weather was going to get worse. Ileana and I had some discussion over coffee and decided that we better head back home before we got stuck on the wrong side of the lake when the storm hit with all it’s fury the following day. I was kicking myself thinking how could the weather forecast be so wrong. So much for the image of sunbathing on the foredeck. So much for the wine tour and romantic dinner in Niagara on the Lake. Even worse, will my fairweather sailor be forever traumatized dashing my plans to take the sailboat down south?
We headed out into the windy dark lake.
The wind was blowing 25 knots with gusts over 30 knots. It was pouring with rain and we got soaked. We got out the foulweather gear, but for some reason Ileana had difficulty getting into her gear beause she was sopping wet and kept on falling over in the rough weather. We flying along at 8.5 knots. The boat was overpowered in the gusty winds but I was able to reef the main sail from the cockpit. We had the small jib flying and we crossed the lake in about 3 hours. When we arrived at Port Credit Yacht Club, the staff were able to help us dock the beast with minimal damage to the dock. We called Sarah and Ryan and invited them to come to the boat for dinner and drinks
My fair weather sailor has turned into a master sailing story teller. So far the plans to head south are still proceeding….
Thank you!!1