42°52′31″ N 79°15′18″ W

Aug 20 – Port Colborne, Ontario

After our arrival on Sunday afternoon we have spent the past 3 days in Port Colborne resting, relaxing & waiting for the winds on Lake Erie to calm down enough for us to have a smooth passage to Port Stanley, our “final” destination.

If we had to be delayed somewhere along the way then Port Colborne is a great place to be.

There’s lots of things to see & do. Here’s a synopsis of the past 3 days!

Monday

This was a chore day for us. I attended to boat mechanical stuff & Catherine did the laundry. However, this time she had the luxury of automatic washers & dryers at the marina.

Here she is hard at work. A major advancement from how she got things done on the last laundry day.

Meanwhile, I was busy watching the marina staff mow our front lawn 🙂

This is quite a contraption. It is used to gather up all of the aquatic plants growing around the marina docks – especially in the shallower areas.

After lunch we walked into the town’s commercial area & bought some more groceries to keep us going until we get home. The marina offers a shuttle service so we were able to get a lift back to the boat with all of our provisions.

Tuesday

We had a relaxing morning & then walked into town after lunch to tour the museum & maritime center. The town has done a great job setting this up. It’s comprised of several historical buildings organized like a little village.

The Museum building currently has an exhibition of life in the town as the Welland Canal was initially developed. They have organized 150 artifacts to coincide with 2017 being Canada’s 150th anniversary of confederation.

There are lots of neat artifacts & supporting information about life in the town during this period of time.

The other building exhibits included a carriage house, a one-room log school, a blacksmiths shop & a settler’s home.

Also on the grounds was the pilothouse from an old steam tug that worked on the canal many years ago.

Obviously it was one of my favorite exhibits.

Catherine also found a wheel to spin. Hers was in the workroom at the back of the settler’s log cabin.

This wheel was just about the same size as the one I was playing with.

After looking everything over closely we went over to the tea room & had some tea & biscuits with homemade strawberry jam!

We closed off the day by setting up our bimini again. Now that we have no more low bridges to worry about we can enjoy the shade & shelter it provides to the flybridge. However, our timing was not all that good. We ate supper first & by the time we finally got the bimini back up it was dark & raining.

Wednesday

We had another laid back morning but I did have one chore to complete. The night before the bilge pump was acting up & not shutting off properly. I went to bed hoping that it would fix itself overnight but knew that I would probably be in the bilge after breakfast.

Luckily the solution to the problem was an easy one. I used my trusty extension handle grabber & fished out a piece of Velcro strapping that was floating in the bilge & every few pump cycles would find its way under the float switch & prevent the pump from stopping after the bilge was pumped dry. This little gadget from the Dollar Store is the best $2.50 I ever spent on a tool.

After the bilge mission was complete we got cleaned up & then went to a play in the afternoon at the Showboat Festival Theater in town.

This play was based on The Hounds of the Baskerville & it was done as a comedy. We weren’t sure what to expect but it turned out to be excellent fun & the actors were brilliant & hilarious.

We spent the rest of the afternoon & evening getting ready for an early departure on Thursday morning. The weather forecast looks promising. We’ll be up at 4:00am & cast off by 5:00am. It’s a 95 mile journey that will take us about 13 hours. If all goes according to plan we will be in Port Stanley by early evening.

Cheers!