Well what a day. It seemed so busy that my mind must be caste back to the early part of day to bring it to mind. An early rise and a shower to start off the day as this would be a public one while getting supplied for a passage to Montreal. Pierre was coming down from Ottawa to help the process by making his car available.
Had a notification from FB which turned out to be Greg, the fellow found on a crew finding group which had shown interest in joining the passage to Halifax. This was long before leaving Scarborough.
He had seemed to go off on a road trip of some sort; which he may have done. At any rate there was a DM from him suggesting that we get together with Pierre on WhatsApp and see how we seemed to jive. We scheduled something for later in the afternoon.
Before Pierre arrived the task to get the electronic navigational system called Navionics was started. It involves a lot of downloading of charts and such. Just as the download was about to start the wifi went down.
Started up to the office to ask about it and found Kim, from the office, out front talking to one of the staff about the Radio License Course. After hearing that the exam had just been passed by me a couple of days previously the staff member had lots of questions which Kim and myself tried to answer as best we could.
Eventually Kim asked what had brought me to the office and it was explained to her about the wifi going down. She asked if the signal could be checked by me with my phone at the wifi antenna. Turning towards the antenna, who should be approaching us across the lawn but Pierre!
He was ready to get the final details of our preparation for departure completed. That task took us, first, to my new go to store, Canadian Tire. Regular readers will remember this used to be the Dollar Tree back in my Scarborough on the hard period.
We got extra diesel and water canisters for storing on deck, a skinny dowl which we are using as an analog means of checking diesel tank levels until a gauge can be installed. A brass connector which is intended to connect a breather hose so that diesel tank will not create a vacuum as the diesel is depleted through use. And of course the hose needed to run the breather to the exit point on the port stern.
After much marching back and forth across a huge Canadian Tire store we felt we were ready for groceries. Again a lot of marching to and fro across a very large store. The shopping, itself, went surprising well as Pierre and myself seemed to share the same style of eating. You might call us practical eaters.
Pierre's car was full by our new procurements but Makina seemed to absorb the supplies as if quenching a thirst.
As evening fell we relaxed over soft drinks and chatted about the journey down the locks of the St. Lawrence Seaway. James gave me a call about this time so we put him on speaker and went over the Pleasure Craft Guide to the Seaway, which Pierre had printed off.
The entire process will take following the procedures set out in the guide, yet sounded very do-able.
We then asked James how things were looking as far as his search for crew. He said he had nothing definite yet had made contact of an old travelling and musician friend of his and that he was planning to convince him to join him for the passage.
Both Pierre and myself thought it very unlikely that a fellow that he had not seen for ages would drop what he was doing and join James on his travels to Halifax. Keep in mind this fellow did not even know that James had a boat!
Highly unlikely.
We told him of Greg and how he would be interested to make the passage to Halifax and may be game to sail with James. James said that he hoped to hear from his old friend a little later and felt confident that he would join him.
We were planning to leave it at that when who should call but the friend and James dropped from our call to try his magic on him. Pierre and myself raised our eyebrows and shrugged our shoulders.
One thing that you must give James is his incredible optimism. He called back a little after Pierre had headed for home and shocked me by saying that his friend had agreed to join him on Tuesday for the passage!
It will be bad news for Greg, though we can explain that if anyone jumps ship from either vessel when we get to Montreal he will be top of the call backs.
Who would have guessed that there would be too much crew!
Our cups runith over.
May the wind be at your back!
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