42°47′3″ N 80°11′42″ W
Aug 24 – Port Dover, Ontario
We started out from Port Colborne at 5:00am on Thursday morning hoping to complete the 95 mile, 14 hour journey to Port Stanley in one day but it wasn’t too long before we realized that wasn’t going to happen.
Even though the weather forecast was good there were still lots of waves & rough water on the lake. We weren’t in any danger but it was a pretty uncomfortable ride so we started considering our options.
Unfortunately, because of our location & the fact that Long Point protrudes many miles into Lake Erie, that meant we would have to make a significant change in our course in order to get to a marina in a reasonable time.
We finally decided to head to a marina in Port Dover & altered our course. We arrived there at 1:00pm & we’re glad to be out of the “lumpy seas”.
This part of Lake Erie has a lot of underwater oil wells. There is no infrastructure above the water but lots of pipelines & wellheads on the lake bottom are shown on the charts. En route to Port Dover we also passed a few barges that we assume were servicing the wells.
Port Dover has a very large marina that is owned & operated by the municipality.
We tied up on the transient dock close to the marina office & other amenities.
Once we were secure on the dock we took some time for a rest. Catherine read.
I went for a walk around the marina yard to check out the boats & found a fixer-upper that I’m sure we could get for a great price. Lotsa room inside & we could bump up against almost anything without too much worry about scratching the paint!
After our rest we decided to walk to the downtown area & grab a bite to eat. Catherine’s brother Steve sent us a text message suggesting that we go to the “Arbour” sidewalk restaurant & have one of their footlong hotdogs. We shared a hotdog & fries & then got some ice cream cones.
We walked down to the beach to check it out & then headed back to the boat to plot our course for Friday.
On our way back we came across the sailboat “Rogue Tiger”. This beautiful boat used to be docked near our Nauticat at the marina in Goderich. The new owners in Port Dover run a successful tourist charter business with it.
The weather & wind forecast looks good so we hope we can make it to Port Stanley by supper time on Friday
Cheers!