0715    Up.  Breakfast cooked on open fire.  The wind has switched right round in the night, and is now SW coming across the little bay by Vail Point, into the fireplace.  Heard another loon, but was too busy to converse with it.

0925    Away, rowing over the rocky shoal.

0935    Put up sails, main and genoa.

0947    Heading 045M. 038T.  Starboard tack.  Wind now E, Force 2.

0948    Tacked on to port.  Heading 125M, 118T.  Visibility less than a mile.

1013    Heading E, wind now NNE.  Close Reach.

1024    The Claybanks abeam, rather misty.  This looks like a bluff similar to what we have been seeing, but it is really a steep claybank, 370 feet high.  Pity visibility isn't better, so that we could see it well.  Impressive even through the mist.  Wind falling light - again!

1228    We have tacked and gybed a few times.  Wind almost nil, and what there is is all over the compass  Lethargy sets in, so that delight in wind will be briefly tempered by resentment at the work it makes.

1239    Aku Aku, Hamilton, a 30 - foot yacht, hailed us.  The skipper recognized Wayfarers!  He offered help and we directed him to Commodore Davis.



1253    All under tow - Aku Aku, 1129, then 460 and lastly 866.  Still just off Claybanks.  Heading 105M, 98T.


Just as we were fixing the towline we saw wind ripples coming across the water!  It would have been a nice beam reach along to Cape Rich.  But a thunderstorm was brewing and winds may have been flukey and squally.  We were glad of a tow after all that wallowing.

1336    158M, 151T.  Aku Aku is evidently taking us to Meaford.  ETA 1500.  The skipper is towing gently, and obviously knows his business.

There is no entry in the log until an hour and a half later, but the interval was not entirely without its events.  The thunderstorm came, and there were sharp gusts, on of which we learned later, registered 40 kts on Aku Aku's anemometer, and laid her well over, with the lee deck just touching the water.  She had hoisted her mainsail to give some help to her small auxiliary motor.

1510    At Meaford, tied up to public dock.  Invited aboard Aku Aku for rum.  No wonder her skipper seemed to know his business!  He is Vic Searles, an engineer from England, and Vice-President of Barber Turbine and Engineering Co., right on the water-front, at Meaford;  and he has started a sailing school there - Westbrook Sailing School.  Clearly sailing is at least as important to him as engineering.


Vic has never had a Wayfarer, but is a friend of Michael and Penny Heath-Eves (W398).  We spent a very agreeable hour chatting aboard Aku Aku.  (She is permanently at Meaford now, but was built in Hamilton.)

Later, we noticed that two important events happened on July 1st, 1867 - the Dominion of Canada was founded, and so was the Barber Turbine and Engineering Co, Meaford.

0645    Woke and dozed till 0715.  Simple breakfast, because of washing-up problems.  There was no place except the dock and no water except the drinking water we had with us.  Lovely sunny morning;  nice westerly breeze after heavy rain in night.

0840    Rain threatened;  dark clouds in W.  Mafor says, for the next 6 hours, Force 7, NE!  Note:  this proved to be an error in decoding Mafor - we had the order of code digits for wind direction and wind force reversed.  Should have read "S11-16k".

0915    Set sail, leaving harbor under full main.  Rain didn't amount to much.

0925    Out of harbor.  Set working jib.

0940    Reefed.  3 rolls.

0950    Down main.

0955    Heading 125M, 118T.  Plan - to go to Thornbury where Jim will meet us so that Alan, who has run out of time, can go home, and W866 will finish the cruise with our son, Jim, as skipper.  Distance to Thornbury - 7 miles.

1035    Approaching Thornbury harbor.  The others have gone to the windward side of the breakwater and are man-handling their boats around the end.  We resolve to do better.  Put up small amount of main - to just above the spreaders - to tack into harbor.  Technique:  main was roughly rolled on boom.  Unrolled it, rolling it the reverse way on the head-board and taking out all but the top batten.  Then re-rolled it neatly on boom, using shock-cords to prevent unrolling more than we needed.

1046    Entering Thornbury Harbor.  We tacked many times to get right into the harbor.  There is a big breakwater on the NW side and a smaller one on the SE side;  we had to tack between them, avoiding both them and the shoals that lie outside them. When we got in, the others remarked that they hadn't had the movie camera out, and would we go out and do it again?  Grrrr!

1330    Back from laundromat.  Jim has now arrived.  Spent afternoon swimming, chatting, going to bakery, having lunch and gazing off the end of the breakwater.  Chatted to a couple who were fishing.  They had caught a "splake" - cross between a spotted trout and a lake trout.  The Government released many thousands of these a few years ago, to populate these waters, and they seem to have done well.

1700    Dinner at King Quong's!  (Good Chinese food).


1845    Back from dinner.  General inspection of the Wankel engine in our Mazda, which Jim had driven up.  Then Alan left for home.

This was the night when the Hanson Air Mattress Adapters were invented.

Hugh (Thomas) was supposed to meet us here, and he wasn't here.  No one was really surprised, as the wind had not been suitable for crossing the open water of Nottawasaga Bay.

Mafor says 17-21k, NW and N.  (But see previous note on error in decoding Mafor.)  Other weather forecasts say 15-20. Decided to go.  Course - 052M - a little less sometimes, to allow for leeway.

1050    Single boat - ? W  ? Bigger boat - seen on horizon, about 3-4 miles away, heading SW.  We are keeping a sharp lookout for Hugh.

1600    Tacked on to starboard.  We are now between the lighthouse on the tip of Christian Island and Cedar Point.  Wind has been Force 4 and our speed 5k for the past three hours, with the weather getting steadily more threatening. Thunder is around, though distant as yet, and it is going to rain any second now.  Tom and Pete have taken down all sail approximately half-way from the lighthouse to Cedar Pt., and are rowing.  460 and 866 are sailing into the harbor.

1700    Landed at Cedar Point in the rain. Rowed the last bit. Put up tents pronto!  Cooked supper on boat under tent, which was cramped and hot, but we did ourselves proud - cheese and cracker hors d'oeuvres, chicken in white sauce, bread and butter, canned raspberries, coffee and cookies!  Everything out of cans and packages, of course.  After the washing up, also under the boat tent, the rain let up.

Rain was not the only reason we stayed under the tent.  This is an Indian reservation, and it is Saturday night.  A good deal of celebration is going on, and we heard one man asking Pete very insistently to take him over to the main part of the reservation on Christian Island.  Pete was heard to point out that his would-be passenger had the wrong kind of shoes on, for this boat.  (He genuinely had on construction boots, we learned later.)  The man insisted that his shoes were O.K. But Pete finally convinced him that we were not ferries and we were staying at the dock all night and not moving.

When the rain was over, all but Jim walked up to the store half a mile up the hill, leaving Jim on guard duty at the boats.  When we returned Jim dived with mask and fins, for my toothbrush which had fallen to the bottom of the harbor, and successfully retrieved it.