Author: Jeff

After I stopped Susan off a week ago Sarah and Samantha visited for the weekend. I then spent a couple of days hanging in the islands around Gananoque. It was hot. Spent one day inside with the AC on.

Wednesday the lower locks on the Rideau opened, so on Thursday I headed for Kingston. I had been debating going down the St Lawrence, but the Rideau was my first choice.

The trip to Kingston wasn’t entirely uneventful. It was windy, but I wasn’t really bothered until a few miles from Kingston where things open up. It was getting a bit bouncy, so I stopped and dropped the dinghy into the water. My davits are for flat water only.

Just after passing Milton Island I looked back and saw the dinghy drifting behind me. The ring on the front had failed. My fault for attaching the line to it.

After chasing it down and getting a line onto the hull eye, I went to get underway and found that the throttle didn’t work at either station. Idle speed only, which was barely enough to keep me pointed into the waves. And after twice stopping and rolling around while futzing with the dinghy I had enough of the waves.

At this point I was very close to the island, which is a Parks Canada site with a nice sheltered dock, so I idled into the lee and got docked. A quick check of the cables showed that the nuts holding the linkage had come loose, so was able to fix that, but I had another problem. I had left a length of line in the dinghy, super strong dyneema that I used for the lifting harness. That had streamed out the drain hole of the dinghy, and was now wrapped on my prop… Guess it got sucked in when I was in reverse when docking.

At that point I gave up for the day. It was cool and windy. Cooked dinner and watched a big beaver climb out on the bank about 30m away. Later that evening I had a raccoon come aboard and get into a bag of garbage in the cockpit. I’m not used to that. I noticed the screen on the forward hatch torn the next day, and I think that was racoon work as well.

Friday morning I woke to a pair of maintenance workers who were there to close the dock as the island is apparently closed. So as they put up fencing I put on my mask and dove down to unwrap the line. The workers offered me a knife a couple of times, but I wanted to clear it.

Regular readers will know that I have a general aversion to being in the water. It wasn’t easy to go in. But once I was in and under the boat it wasn’t hard. I really should try to swim regularly.

Friday I stopped in Kingston and stocked up on groceries, then spent the night at the bottom of the first lock.

Saturday I stopped at Newboro and had a nice meal about a ten minute walk away.

Today I headed to Perth, had dinner out there, and am now here in the swamp on the Tay River for the night.

I’m now at the highest point in the system. The lakes below Newboro are beautiful and not overly developed. Lots of wilderness.

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My sister Susan joined me in Kingston a week ago, and hopped off in Brockville five days later. We had beautiful calm weather the entire time, and both enjoyed exploring and bird watching. It was her first time aboard Mazurka.

Here’s her account and a small selection of her photos.

I am writing this in downtown Toronto on Saturday afternoon, having spent most of last week cruising the Thousand Islands area with my big brother, Jeff, on Mazurka.  It was a great experience for a myriad of reasons.  The weather and scenery were spectacular.  Due to the late start to the tourist season, there were very few boats; the places we stopped were quiet and mostly uninhabited.  Despite seeing a swimming snake (eek) on day 2, I jumped in the water to paddle around every day after that, as Jeff found (princess) me places where the water was crystal clear to the bottom.   Jeff even got in the water once! 

I loved the relaxed pace and freedom to noodle around, as the only agenda was to explore what caught our fancy.  This included staying overnight in quiet inlets to watch and listen to wildlife, seeing amazing sunrises, checking out marinas, circumnavigating Boldt castle, and finding the best waterfront restaurants along the way. 

Now don’t get me wrong, that was all great, but best of all was hanging out with Jeff in his element.  It takes a lot of knowledge and experience to safely maneuver through the St. Lawrence, and Jeff made it look easy.   Like many siblings we occasionally bicker, but we are close.  I have friends who have difficult familial relationships so I know what we have is not that common.  This week reminded me again how much I cherish and appreciate our relationship.  It probably helped that I stopped working halfway through when my office internet got cut off when we got close to the US.  Lol. #boatlife    

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Last time I wrote I was heading up the Trent Severn.  Mostly this was because I had time on my hands and it was open. 

I met Miles and Brad at Campbellford, and we had a three day cruise up to the top of the Peterborough Lift Lock and back.

We had nice weather, and they seemed to enjoy themselves.  After spending a couple of days in Campbellford letting some stormy wether pass and doing some delayed cleaning and maintenance I left there yesterday morning and came back down the canal and into the Bay of Quinte.

Today after stopping in Belleville for more cheap fuel I nipped into Napanee and had a late lunch at the riverview restaurant there.  Today is their first day open since COVID-19 hit.

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I’m now anchored here near Adolphustown.  Tomorrow I run down to Kingston to meet Suey who is joining me for a week or so.  I’m hoping the Rideau Canal will open soon.  Guess we’ll noodle around the Thousand Islands while we wait. 

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That’s a panorama picture. Trying out fancy phone features.

Yesterday I got through the Murray Canal, and picked up a season pass for the Parks Canada systems.  Poked my nose into Trenton, but the fuel dock was closed, so continued down to Belleville, where I fueled up for a very reasonable $.699/l.  Then noodled down to Deseronto, turned around and went back to Trenton and spent the night at Trent Severn Lock 1.

My basic plan has been to head east rather than north.  But the Rideau Canal is not yet open, nor are the St Lawrence Seaway locks. The Trent Severn us open to Orillia, so that’s a nice side trip, if nothing else.  Or I can head into Georgian Bay at some point. No bad options.

Yesterday’s weather was decent but unsettled. At one point a vicious wind squall came through. No rain but winds went from 5-35 knots very suddenly. Glad I wasn’t sailing.  As it was I lost my hat while hanging onto the bimini.  Went back for it.

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Today I traveled through the first six locks with another boat, Steve and Jane on their new-to-them Sundancer 310.  Locktenders say there have been six boats through so far.  Don’t know whether that includes us or not.  The locks are open from 10-3:30 and a problem with one lock caused a delay of a couple of hours.   I stopped for the night at Glen Ross lock. Nice spot.

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Tomorrow Miles and Brad are coming for a couple of days. Will meet them in Campbellford.

Today was the first warm day I’ve had. Here are some pics coming up today.

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Didn’t go far today. It was cool and grey when I got up, so I stayed put with the heat on until mid afternoon before getting underway. Poked my nose into the local yacht club, where they’re launching this weekend. Then into the Murray Canal. Tied up at the Brighton Bridge until it opens in the morning.

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I’ve got a satellite tracker, and will try to figure out how to share. Here’s my path over the last two days.

I left Marina Quay West at 0530 today and am now happily anchored here just off Presqu’ile Provincial Park. 85 nm took about 11 hours, just straight down the lake. Nice day when the sun was out but still pretty chilly out on the lake.

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I’m roaming. No fixed address for the next four months. I had originally planned to head out the St Lawrence, but am increasingly thinking of staying in Ontario. The heritage canals opened today, though not fully, so that’s where I’m headed.

Boat is good, no surprises. I still have lots of items on the to-do list but nothing that can’t wait or be done underway.

Miles and Brad are coming this weekend for two days so I’ll need to be somewhere interesting by then. Stay tuned.

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The weather hasn’t been great here, and so I stayed in winter mode until a few days ago, when I finally took the cover off.

My winter dockage was up on May 1, but since all marinas have been locked down most folks didn’t have anywhere to go, so we’ve all sort of been in limbo. As of this week clubs and marinas are allowed to open, and seem to be doing so slowly.

I found a replacement dinghy on Kijiji. Don’t know if I mentioned here, but I gave away my old Avon RIB 310. It was pretty far gone. I was thinking of buying a new one but came across a used Zeppelin 300 aluminum bottom. Just what I had in mind.

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I was especially happy when my outboard started up today. I had dunked it thoroughly last September and hadn’t run it since, just put lots of oil in the cylinders and put it away. Hard to kill those two stroke outboards!

There are a few other maintenance items to tick off, and at some point I want to haul and swap props and reduction gears, but am planning to give up my slip here and get underway at the end of the month. Heading east, with the hope that the Rideau Canal or the St Lawrence Seaway opens in June. Staying flexible.

Tin Lizzie will stay on the trailer for the foreseeable future. I have a replacement rudder in Indiana that I can’t go fetch, and the boat needs to go in the shop for a new stern tube. Hopefully we’ll get out later in the summer, but it looks like no racing this year.

I may have used that title before. But it’s apt.

I’m happily living aboard Mazurka in downtown Toronto. Have been here now for ten days and have been far less socially active for a long time. I like it here.

My family is safe, I believe. I raised alerts with them early on, and they all seem to be supporting one another admirably. Sarah is working in Toronto and has been delivering care packages to me.

Not sure of summer plans, but my default is to stay within a few miles of here. I have everything I need to make a great summer of that.

I’m guessing the the GLSS events I was considering will be called off. Maybe we’ll get to rip around Georgian Bay later this summer. Here’s hoping!

Thanks to all who are following. I’m good.

To be honest, I haven’t really been obsessing too much over cruise ships for the last 36 hours or so. I pretty much stated my case here and moved on. Because as large as this story is, there is a lot of big news right now, with profound implications for so many populations and industries.

I sort of expected some dramatic action yesterday, and it didn’t happen. But there were some hints. Pence made mention of a 72 hour action plan that started from the Saturday meeting. Trump made some remarks yesterday about big news coming today. But no big news. This evening I went back for another look.

I mentioned in my first post on cruise ships that I was watching two ships, the Pacific Princess and the MSC Opera. There have been a few others that I’ve kept an eye on that I don’t have to drag out right now.

The MSC Opera is docked in Genoa. I thought I read somewhere that the passengers and crew were cleared to disembark, but now I’m not sure. It will come out soon enough. I’d bet my last dime on there being infection aboard. I hope the actions of port and health authorities in Greece and Italy with this ship will come under close scrutiny. Malta turned the ship away under pressure from doctors there. There’s a story there if anyone wants to find it.

A point I’d like to make on Pacific Princess is one of spin. They went aboard, tested a small group of occupants, and came back with close to a 50% positive rate. 21 people total, according to the Princess web site. And the headline number everywhere has remained small. It’s not a stretch to suggest that the majority of crew and a good number of passengers are currently infected. The true numbers will no doubt be available somewhere, some time. I want to emphasize that perception is being very tightly managed. They could easily have tested all passengers by now and made summary results available. But 21 doesn’t raise the same alarm as 867, or some such number. The CV-19 numbers being thrown around in the US lately have been largely bullshit. I’ll talk about that lots. Just a heads up.

One more Pacific Princess thought: US announced they would take passengers but not crew. I’d bet that there was a plan in place, if only briefly, for the ship to depart Oakland for BC. That’s probably back in the air now, but a relatively minor concern in the scheme of things. It sounded like US was expecting owner to handle it.

Now, to some current at-a-glance pics from my free Android App. These are cruise ships shown.

What I think I’m seeing is that ships that are at sea are mostly lollygagging around. Ports seem very empty. Destinations appear to be almost completely empty. I’m sure there’s data out there to support or disprove my thesis, but all will become clear soon.

I have a narrative on the last few days. Here’s some points:

1) US and cruise chiefs met Saturday under the cloud of Pacific Princess and with other alarming information just bubbling up. I’m pretty sure there were clear negative indicators in Florida over the previous week that were at best willfully ignored, at worst understood and suppressed.

2) while wanting to be supportive of the business, I think the administration likely laid down the law on avoiding another Pacific Princess. And put the onus squarely on the business to make sure it didn’t happen, and that if it did they would own it.

3) public messaging changed quite dramatically on Sunday. Public health official’s concerns were winning the day through the weekend. I mentioned the State Dept announcements earlier.

4) Pence made specific mention of at least one other ship they were interested in. Can’t remember the details, but there could very well have been others. One other ship I was watching as likely known infected was due in two days ago but is now loitering around Grand Bahama.

I’m going to venture that limited or possibly full onboard testing started on the weekend across multiple ships, and after positive results started pouring in, the magnitude of the problem became clearer.

I’m also convinced that no ships with known cases will enter port in the US. Not their problem.

The magnitude?

I’m not going to speculate much further, but if ports insist on seeing negative test results for all passengers and crew in order to land they may remain largely empty. There are some very tough decisions ahead on how to deal with this, and the magnitude of the challenge may be much higher than anybody was expecting.

Just dug out a post that I made to Trawler Forum when the subject was introduced. Feb 17. It didn’t get much traction then.

I was pretty much bang on. But it’s not a couple. It’s much more than that.

@jeff_zolo

Anyway, I’ll offer up my highly individualized plan for social distancing and how I got there. There’s lots of credible information out there, so I’m not going to try to explain too much.

Not long after I started following CV-19 closely I started thinking about risk. It’s the kind of guy I am. I like to make qualitative decisions and manage risk. Get the big stuff right and don’t sweat the small.

Question one: How afraid am I to get the virus personally? For me, not terribly. I’d likely survive, and for the moment I have top notch care available locally. I don’t work or care for others, so a stint in the hospital wouldn’t be a huge disruption.

But that’s just the beginning. Think about your close circle. Those who are most at risk of catching the virus from you if you become infectious. People you work with. Family. And identify those who are high risk From what we know age is the big leading indicator, but there may be others with health concerns.

For me, there are really only two people who are at significantly higher risk from the virus in my immediate orbit, my mother in law Kathleen and my sister Susan. I’m in regular close contact with both of them.  The other people that I have regular contact with are not at high risk, so I am less concerned with unknowingly infecting them.

I had a brief chat with Susan about this. She has a terminal illness and is carrying on with life in downtown Toronto, walking to work at her government office and free of interactions with the general public. She’s relatively protected there. But she still goes out to community events and her church. I can’t fault her choices, and am relieved that I’m off the hook. If she catches C-19 it’s not likely to have been from me.

Kathleen is a different case. She and I have lived under the same roof for more than 20 years. I love her dearly. She’s 77 and vibrant, but not invincible. So I’ve worked with other members of the household to implement a regimen that I hope will allow us to live together while taking appropriate precautions to protect her. It’s an evolving situation, but I’m pretty comfortable with it right now.

Lots more to come on this, but thought I’d throw it out.

@jeff_zolo