Finally Underway
Hey everyone. Some of you will have noticed that my expedition is underway. On July 16 I left the Newport Yacht Club @ Stoney Creek to begin my journey. My plan was to get a blog out before now, alas the weather and boat gods have been keeping me rather busy. Let me catch you up. Because I’m limited with writing time just now, I’m going to use a few short forms, like WW for the Water Weaver and my home base, the Canadian Rivers Institute at the University of New Brunswick, CRI@UNB.
July 16 was WW’s date with the Welland Canal taking her from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. The Welland Canal trip requires a crew of 3 and I was joined by Karen Kidd (McMaster University) and Meghann Bruce from my CRI@UNB team. Meg flew to Hamilton to crew and then return all my gear to Fredericton where it will await my return in 2024!
We set out at 0730hrs on a beautiful Lake Ontario morning. We were a bit late to the Canal and we had to wait for the laker, Algoma Equinox, to go first. The transit was about 10 hours and finished at Sugarloaf Marina, Port Colbourne. If you are thinking about that transit, then be prepared, it is long but interesting and arrive at least 1 hour before they tell you to be there. We were 4 non-commercial boats that involved 2x2 rafting with us off Captain Bruce and his Nonsuch crew out of Pickering, Ontario. It is an amazing ride through the locks and our first of many ahead. At the end of the day, I said goodbye to my crew who headed back with their chauffeur, Joanne Parrot. I slept well that night!
Early the next morning on my own, I filled up at the gas dock and headed west onto Lake Erie. The morning was sunny and a bit bouncy. I could see the wind coming up in the afternoon as I lunched behind Long Point. I chose to keep going. As Lake Erie veterans know, this was a mistake that I’m adding to my list of ‘rookie mistakes’ in my early days on the water. Winds came up to 30kph gusts from the WSW, waves grew to sporadic 2m or more (I lost track). I quartered the waves for about 2 hours and got very wet with everything in a shambles inside. There was no turning back once you make that turn around Long Point because that would have been water into the aft cockpit. Eventually, the winds died as predicted and I could alter course towards Erieau to battle with what I learned as 4 and 8 knot waves for the next 3 hours. There is more to this story, but that is for dockside storytelling one day. WW performed outstandingly but the dock was a welcoming site for both of us.
I stayed at Erieau Marina hosted by Dave the owner, whose wife is a UNB grad, and Kathy the dock manager. There were new issues to address on the boat. Kathy stopped by early and gave me her golf cart to find Dave so I could get started with the boat work. My alternator was acting up, I had water in the bilge that wasn’t draining, my Garmin autopilot gave out (yes, I was at the helm all of the previous day), and the captain was a bit tired, so an extra night at Erieau was an easy decision. Dave was simply the best walking me through various solutions including coming on board to check out a few issues. That night I had a great perch dinner (one of the best of many I’ve tried) at the Sandbar in ‘downtown’ Erieau and went to bed early again.
The next day was calm and sunny. Very early, I gassed up with some weary-eyed university students working for the summer, said goodbye and thanked everyone at the marina for their great hospitality, and headed west. The lake was glassy calm this day. I planned a swim at Pele Island at lunch, but the blue-green alga (cyanobacteria) were in full bloom as far as you could see, and the exuvia (shells) of Hexagenia (a muddy bottom mayfly) were everywhere; I took a pass. These blooms are a story coming up. Using the many billowing smoke stacks along the USA shores as my markers, we found and entered the Detroit River making our way to LaSalle, Ontario for the night. The Detroit River must have been an amazing and wonderful river-wetland before modern development. Today there are multiple factories and power generation plants along the USA side for most of the run to Detroit. I spent that evening with Trevor Pitcher (University of Windsor) checking out some local eateries, his Freshwater Restoration Ecology Centre (a partnership with the town who share the space as an education centre), and his backyard, night-cap tiki hut. We chatted about various projects underway at GLIER (Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research) where there is a great team and wealth of opportunities to study our impacts on water environments along the Detroit River and beyond. Trevor was especially proud of his species at risk research and I got to see the beautiful and endangered Redside dace, that are the broodstock for many experiments that have supported decisions to protect this species.
Early the next day I travelled past industrial and downtown Detroit / Windsor, crossed Lake St. Clair, and entered the St. Clair River for my next rendezvous. The multi-billion dollar bridge to nowhere between Detroit and Windsor is interesting. It is a story about a person owning an international bridge and keeping a new one from being built – ah, we humans, more on that later. Lake St. Clair was the craziest water I’ve traversed so far. It started glassy calm and waves came up (<0.2m), but in the channel I was rocking and rolling in a cacophony of 1m waves. I passed several fishers calmly standing in their small boats just 50m away. This was a bizarre physics I’m still pondering - let me know what you think in the comments. I stopped at the Walpole Island First Nations community in Bkejwanong Territory to take a picture of the Tecumseh statue. I will write more about this later.
I arrived to Mooretown, Ontario where I met my next crew for the ride into Sarnia. This was a tour and chat about the river and petrochemical industry that grew here. My crew was Diane Werezak, Mort and Grace White, and Karen Kidd again. Karen’s dad George (Diana’s husband) and Mort were among the early engineers arriving in the 1960s to build that industry. Mort, Grace, and Diane had a story for every structure old and new we passed, including Mort’s very clear telling of the mercury problems which was fun for Karen who is one of Canada’s leading scientists examining mercury in the environment. These stories will eventually get woven into a bigger story about our industrialized rivers.
We docked by 1500hr at the Bridgeview Marina. We headed off and at 1530hr a ‘tornado’ struck Sarnia with the WW in its path. The high winds uprooted trees and gravel-sized hail rained down for about 30 minutes. WW survived with no issues, but not so for some of the very large trees within 100m of the dock that got dragged about 1m. It was quite a storm and I was very glad we made it off the water.
My longtime colleague and friend Kelly Munkittrick (University of Calgary) arrived later that night to join me for the next leg of the expedition. I also got a land-bed and some laundry done that night chez Diane. We were storm-stayed another night in Sarnia (too windy on Lake Huron) and we filled the day with boat chores and a health break at a local pub. We left early Saturday morning across a glassy Lake Huron heading NW to Port Elgin, Ontario. It was getting bouncy when we arrived at lunchtime and my alternator was still giving me trouble, so we gassed up and plugged the boat in for an hour to enjoy some ice cream and chats with Manager Mike and a couple of local boaters at the Port Elgin Marina.
We headed north again targeting Tobermory, Ontario but a call-in came back with a full dock situation. We got some guidance to a beautiful anchor-out site which became a lovely evening in the islands. I fired up the portable generator, apparently to test my 2 carbon monoxide alarms, and eventually charged up WW’s batteries. I grabbed the generator in Sarnia to deal with my ongoing alternator issue and become my power emergency blanket.
The next morning we had a glassy ride into Killarney, Ontario, the place of my MSc research on acid rain. The town had upgraded itself significantly since the 1980s when Brian Ferguson, Tom Hoggarth, Ed Snucins, and I made our way from the woods of Killarney Provincial Park to the Sportsman’s Inn for a beverage with locals. We had a pickerel (walleye) lunch at a new fisheries shop and then struck west tucking close to Manitoulin Island to arrive at our next dock, Meldrum Bay Marina. John the marina and campground manager (and retired plumber) was an excellent host and storyteller – Al Capone, skulls, fireworks, plus Ken a local farmer who might just have an alternator in his barn. I have some future stories to tell.
The next day we maneuvered our way into the St. Mary’s River, and USA waters apparently, docking at the Roberta Bondar Marine in downtown Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. We were a day late but managed to get Kelly to the airport on time. That was Monday night. It is Friday as I write and I will be here another night at least. Why, because I’m in a fix-my-issues mode, and the weather of course. First, my alternator - I had called the local marine shops with no luck. I made a call out to my ‘cross-country’ tech crew who connected me to a friend with trucking company (Ryan and Lois, Bruce Mines) who made some calls that took me from “what do I do next” to a mechanic on my boat a few hours later. Matt with a call-in to Craig diagnosed a failed alternator, it came off and a new, rebuild was installed the next day. Simply amazing people I’m meeting along the way which is a story for another day too. My autopilot solution is a complex issue with Garmin because I don’t have an address which means a place to ship parts (it will be somewhere in Michigan). WW also needs some woodwork TLC. And last, I have a few online things to take care of like this blog!
Amongst working on these jobs, I had a visit on the boat with Elaine Ho-Tassone of the Nordik Institute to chat about local water quality monitoring initiatives among Indigenous communities. And I have had time with Karen Smokoroski (Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Great Lakes Laboratory for Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences and Carleton University) talking about hydropower (another future story). She has been my chauffeur for boat parts and I raided her garden for some fresh vegetables too!
Until Next time, Allen (Sault Ste. Marie, ON - July 28, 2023)
