Cedar Island - West Dock (2013-08-09)

N 44° 13.652', W 076° 27.150'

Well, we made it over to the west dock on Cedar Island as planned.  It almost looked like we weren't going to move.  The day dawned grey and wet.  The forecast had called for a 30% chance of rain, but it rained from about 0700 until about noon.


As the weather started to clear up we heard from our friends that they were just about ready to leave the west dock.  We untied from the northeast dock and moved over to wait for the dock to clear and then we moved in and tied up.

Cedar Island - West dock

Not everything is rosy about this spot though.  It's very exposed to the west towards Kingston, and with this weekend being a poker run weekend, you can imagine the state of the water between there and here.  If we stay on Cedar Island again, unless the water is very calm we will be staying on the northeast docks.

After moving we met up with two couples that hail from across the bay at the CFB Kingston Yacht Club, Chuck and Donna, and Pete and Elaine.  Chuck is also ex military, and worked at many radar sites.  We compared notes and it doesn't look like we were at any of the same sites at the same time, but we still have probably crossed paths at one time or another.

One of the tasks for today was to see if I could get the outboard for the dinghy running.  We wanted to make a run in to Kingston to drop off our garbage (Cedar Island is a 'pack out what you pack in' zone) and to get some groceries.  I haven't had the outboard running at all so far this year, and only ran it a few times last year.  Now that we're full time we're going to need reliable transportation to and from the boat.

I set everything up and found that the outboard wouldn't start.  Thinking back to my experiences troubleshooting outboard motor problems when I was younger, I broke it down.  I popped the cover off and could see that the fuel filter had fuel in it.  I couldn't smell gas, so I knew it wasn't flooded.  The only thing left was spark.  I popped out the spark plugs, one at a time (there's two in my 9.9), cleaned them and took a rough look at the gap.  Unfortunately I only just realized I don't have a gapping tool, so I just kind of set them by eye.  These plugs are due for replacement, so when I buy some new ones I'll buy a gapping tool at the same time and gap them the right way.

After putting everything back together I gave it a few more pulls and it started up.  After letting it warm up a bit, and making sure the water pump was pumping water, I took the dinghy for a quick spin around the bay.  It didn't give me any problems so I figured it was ready for the roughly 1 nm trip over to Confederation Basin.

Our 'family car' ready for service

Dar and I set off in the dinghy, headed towards Confederation Basin.  We actually managed to get the dinghy up on plane, and when planing it is pretty fast.  Unfortunately with all the boat traffic the water was just too rough to stay on plane so I reluctantly backed off on the throttle.

Even running below plane we still managed to cross over to Confederation Basin fairly quickly, taking only about 10 minutes.  We got ourselves tied up in a spot at the day docks, dumped our trash in the nearby bins and then headed off for our grocery run.  We hit the Food Basics a few blocks away and came back with four good sized bags of goodies.

The trip back was mostly problem free with the exception of one large wake that kind of came out of nowhere on me while we were planing again, causing both of us (but more so Dar sitting right up in the bow) to have a big bounce on the seat.  I slowed down again, breaking into and out of plane all the way back.

Returning to the mother-ship

After unloading the groceries, we had a nice supper and kicked back with our new friends.  We all sat around a small fire in the fire pit near the boats, chatting and telling tall tales, all the while listening to the concert going on at Old Fort Henry.