Driving to Ottawa

At two dollars per foot, Hurst Marina was expensive, and to top it off they parked or rather I should say I parked us in a lily pad. Slip 61 was right off the fuel dock where we had just had Carrie Rose’s holding tank pumped. I checked the fuel and we still have ¾ of a tank, so no need for fuel. I powered out into the Rideau did a U-turn and headed straight into the space.

The first inclination that this spot was shallow was my bow thruster boughing down. A bow thruster has a high-pitched whining sound, which for some reason makes me feel guilty each time I use it. And once I have committed to its use in a docking situation, to hear it strain leaves a sick feeling in my solar plexus.

At first, I thought it might be weeds but no, it was mud. By this time, the lines had been thrown ashore and we sat teetering as if we were grounded. I checked the depth sounder, it read two to three feet, next I checked my forward-looking depth sounder, and it read zero. So there, we sat in the mud with a beautiful patch of blooming lily pads before us. All I could think was thanks be we hit mud and not rocks.

Hurst Marina had a few things going for it. For one it splits up the Long Reach (yes, that's what it is called on the chart) of 23 miles from Burritt’s Rapids to the next locks at Long Island. The others are fuel, water, pump out, laundry, showers, and a pool and hot tub. Pumped out, laundry done, hot tub taken as well as two showers each, we pushed on sliding off the mud and leaving the now closed blooms behind.

Just to keep some concept of time and the calendar this day is Thursday 7/10/2014. Each morning the first thing I do is confirm the day by writing it in the ships log. Once we turned our phones off it is amazing how amorphous the concept of time becomes. I also write the time we depart in the log as well as the engine hours. I never write the destination until we get there. This is a throwback to my medical training where I learned never to write anything in the notes, no matter how quickly it was going to be done, until it was actually done. A lesson I learned the hard way.

So this Thursday’s short hop to Long Island turned into a 15.8 nautical mile cruise through Long Island’s three locks, Black Rapid’s single lock, Hog Back’s three and onto the top of Hartwell’s two locks; where we spent the night. It took us from the country to the city. From cottages to skyscrapers, from osprey and kingfishers and songbirds, to 737s and Airbuses, from quaint rustic architecture, to the worst of bloated suburbia, from anglers to bicyclist and joggers.

Along the way colorful graffiti appeared at the base of bridges, around one bend the traffic lights were so close I almost stopped for the red light and to top it all off I actually had to radio a pirate ship full of screaming children in Mooney’s Bay to make sure I could pass in front of it.

Carrie Rose arrived at the wooded top of Hartwell Lock at 1:55 five hours after we started. We were greeted by Ross, who certainly gets the reward for the most bodacious lockmaster on the Rideau Waterway, and settled in for the night. Well, that is not true. I got the bikes down, filled the tires with air, oiled the rusty chains and off we biked to Little Italy. We had Greek pastry and espresso at a family run bakery where the mother was chiding one daughter, while the other daughter was unsuccessful at trying to get her smoking, kibitzing father back in the store. We bought a beautiful loaf of bread from another smoking baker and in next door deli some tuma cheese just because I had never tasted it before.

Back at the boat, dinner was spaghetti with fresh pesto sauce. A salad of local arugula with tomato and avocado, all relished with the calabrese bread and the semi-soft slightly salty tuma washed down with a not-bad-for-Ontario French Vouvry wine.

It was a quiet spot here in the trees once the half moon started to rise from around the skyscraper to our right. The end of an eventful day.