Days 10, 11

Left Waterford at about 9 or so, to catch the falling tide down to the marina where we were going to step our mast.

Yes, now we are in tidal waters. At Waterford, the tide is approximately 4 feet. It’s not like that all the way up and down the river, but the river is narrow at Waterford, so the water has nowhere to go except up. Think of the bay of Fundy ha ha. We get a huge lift by going downstream when the tide is falling, probably a knot or two.

We made pretty good time down to Hop-O-Nose. Huh? That’s the marina at the town of Catskill where we are going to step the mast. Arrived mid afternoon and spent the rest of the day preparing the mast for its raising. During the evening I had a shower.

The next morning we were scheduled to be the second boat at the crane for mast stepping, but boat number one took quite a long time, so we didn’t get there till 11. It’s quite the process. If you look carefully at the featured image above, you’ll see a guy at up the mast at the spreaders. He simply clambered hand over hand up a rope with his feet on the mast in order to undo the collar around the mast.

We spent the rest of the afternoon rigging the boat. That is getting the boom on, the sails attached, all the ropes in the right place, fixing errors and generally making the boat more like a sailboat again. It was pretty windy so getting the sails on was a trial. By the time we were done, it was too late to leave for our next destination so we stayed another night.

We met a real cool dude down the dock. He’s from Goderich, Ontario, and he seems to make his retirement interesting by delivering boats. That he was on his 37th delivery! It was a Gozzard 42 foot sailboat, and he invited us on board for a tour and a glass of wine. He was also quite helpful when we needed a third hand.