A short cruise in the Thousand Islands

We are underway southwesterly across Lake Ontario, bound for Oswego. We had a mostly pleasant couple of weeks in the Thousand Islands, but today is the last good day to cross the lake for the foreseeable future.  We've mostly had our fill for this visit, and we managed to hit a few new spots before we slow-roll our way back to New York City.

At Boldt Castle, in background, near the Dove Cote.

After last I posted here, we splashed the tender after dinner and I went ashore stag for a walk, landing at the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Fisheries dock. I chatted for a while with our friend Paul from Parnassia and had a nice stroll around town, refreshing my memory. As on previous visits, the line for the ice cream stand was the busiest place in town. The brew pub, the lone restaurant in town, had closed early for the 4th. The Coal Docks restaurant, right across from the DEC, had shuttered, along with The Roxy at the other end of town, where we ate on our first visit.

There is always a line for ice cream at Twist of Cape.

Friday we returned ashore together for a nice walk through town, landing at the transient dock closer to town. As we had remembered from five years ago, the town is very quiet on the Independence Day holiday, with most folks driving east for the big goings-on in the Clayton/Alexandria Bay area, with the local celebration reserved for the annual "French Festival" that happens every year on the second weekend in July.

We dropped lines before lunch to continue downriver to Clayton, taking the longer but more scenic route behind Grindstone Island. We worked our way as far into the harbor as depth would allow, dropping the hook not far from our last couple of spots (map). Evidently, we picked the weediest spot in the harbor, and swinging most of the way around a full circle overnight gathered a metric ton of them on our anchor chain.

We seem to have gathered a few weeds.

The last time we were in this region over the July 4th holiday, the lake was so high that docks everywhere and even some streets were under water, and I think that had the effect of keeping a lot of people off the lake. Not so this time, and the channel on the American side was a washing machine. Clayton itself was packed to the gills, and we quickly determined that we did not want to tender through the river to the free town docks, nor would we be able to get anywhere near the Wooden Boat Brewery near the $7 day dock. Instead we tendered around the back of the sheds at the French Bay Marina to The Boat Yard at French Bay, a recently opened joint with a nice patio and decent casual fare. Even the live music was enjoyable.

The wakes that had made the harbor so miserable when we arrived died down after dinner, and we had a comfortable night. But we knew things would be even worse on Saturday, and we made plans to skip town before things heated up. In the calm of the morning we tendered around the corner to the free visitor docks, and hoofed it up the hill to the Shurfine supermarket for some fresh produce, with a stop at the gas station on the way back for a couple of gallons of fuel for the dinghy. By the time we pulled back out into the river, the Cigarette boats had already awakened from their slumber and we beat a hasty retreat to Vector, splashing over wakes the whole way.

Vector, looking diminutive on the Cape Vincent breakwall.

This little taste of high holiday on the river had me scanning downriver looking for an anchorage that would be protected from these wakes, which would, no doubt, continue for the remainder of the weekend. And while there are a lot of anchorages for Vector in the Thousand Islands, most of them are exposed either to the river, or to one of the many well-used side channels that criss-cross the islands between the US and Canada. Ultimately we decided to try for a familiar spot off the Thousand Island Club, in a no-wake zone and protected from the river by an island, with a backup option to continue downriver to Goose Bay.

It was just a one and a half hour cruise downriver through the American Narrows, but the steep sides of the narrows simply reflected all the giant powerboat wakes back into the river, making it a miserable, choppy mess for the entire cruise. We were happy to find the anchorage in front of the club empty, as there is but one spot there where we fit, sparing us another half hour or so in the river to Goose Bay. It's a narrow entrance that requires complete attention and no hesitation, with the depth going from over a hundred feet to less than twenty in the span of three boat lengths, but we had a good track from when the lake was higher.

There is a Bruce anchor in there somewhere,

We had the hook down in that familiar spot (map) before 2pm. We figured we'd be hunkered down here through the rest of the holiday weekend for traffic, and then another day beyond for weather. Of the three nights we'd be there, only on Saturday would the club be open for dinner, and so we booked a table on the covered deck for the evening, and I called the marina for instructions on landing the tender. While "club" is right in the name, both the restaurant and the marina are open to the public, and tables are booked through Resy.

We were relaxing on board, recovering from the holiday shenanigans on the river, when a 58' Tiara pulled up and a woman on the foredeck started screaming at us that we had to move. Apparently they were trying to get into their slip, which was, I kid you not, a full 250' away (we used the laser rangefinder as well as the chart). We were, as I said, in the only spot in the harbor where we fit, managing our swing among the rock side of an island, an underwater rock, a shoal, and the marina channel, and I tried to tell her there was no place I could go, but she was having none of it.

A view from our masthead cam showing how much maneuvering room there is between us and the docks. The Starlink terminal is at the corner of the boat.

A Tiara 58 has pod drives and a joystick control that makes docking dead simple even for rank amateurs. The problem with that is that you don't learn how to do anything without them, and, to be fair, she did say they were having problems. If you have one engine out on these boats, you need to drive it like an outboard. The skipper had no skill, and while his mate on the foredeck was still screaming and calling me names which I can not print here, he managed to wedge the boat cattywampus between the finger pier and a steel piling. They had no fewer than five line handlers on deck, including the teenagers who were treated to mommy's potty mouth, and several of their dock neighbors came out to help, so eventually they got it squared up and tied off.

Dinner on the deck with a Vector view.

The whole episode really rattled me, and I had my fingers crossed we'd not run into them at dinner. At one point while she was calling me unprintable names I asked if she needed me to come over and dock the boat for her -- it was a really unchallenging docking. For our landlubber readers, most marina fairways (the space between the boats in rows of slips) are less than 100' wide. And we've had some doozies where I've had less than 60', or just barely enough to get Vector parallel to the slip before pulling in, including the place we stayed in Beaufort when I needed to rush to the eye doctor. 250' is a lot of maneuvering room.

We had a lovely dinner at the club, with the livid Tiara crew nowhere in sight. The interaction just reinforced our decision to hunker down, because not only do holiday weekends bring out the run fast and play hard crowd, but they also bring out all the amateurs who only use their boats four times a year. These guys got it to the dock and we never saw them again. Nor did we see anyone open up their engine bay to even look at the alleged problem.

The Alster Tower at Boldt Castle, This was, essentially, the rec center.

We had a nice stroll around the grounds after dinner, wherein we learned there was a little coffee house in the historic Hart House B&B, and we thought about returning in the morning for a breakfast pastry. As it happened, however, on Sunday morning we ended up helping some good friends who were under way and having a medical emergency on board. We know first-hand how difficult it is to research this kind of thing online while underway, and so we were happy to help.

It was Professor Plum, with the lead pipe, in the billiard room.

Unwilling to brave the maelstrom of the river or the holiday crowds to visit Alexandria Bay, known locally as Alex Bay or just A-Bay, and with the club closed, we just had a quiet day and a nice dinner on board. My big project for the down day: figuring our where we were going next, and when we needed to be out of the lake to be back in New York City in time for a commitment there.

Our goal for this trip was to cruise the New York State Canals, as a destination more than a conduit. This has been stuck in our minds for a year, as we were hoping to do a Hudson River and Erie Canal cruise whenever we left the boatyard last year. A pipe dream if ever there was one; regular readers will know we barely left the yard in time to get out of the northeast before everything closed for the season.

1892 steam yacht Kestrel in the Boldt Yacht House. It's still operational.

We spent two weeks coming up to the lake from New York, and had figured we'd spend maybe three weeks of the remaining seven getting back, leaving us four weeks to spend cruising the Thousand Islands, which we like very much, or maybe some more of the western parts of the lake if the weather cooperated. Our last time through here we bypassed the New York side in our haste to get to Canada. But here, not even a week into the Thousand Islands, we had already lost our enthusiasm to uncooperative weather, and generally unpleasant boating conditions. It has been nothing at all like our past two visits.

After staring at charts for two full hours and looking at all the options, we finally decided we'd have a more pleasant cruise by taking a little over a full month to get back to New York City, making even more of the stops that we missed on our last three passes, and staying a bit longer at some of the stops we enjoy the most. Among the many factors in that decision: Louise is being eaten alive up here, and the bugs were a lot more manageable further south. We will likely pay a price in higher temperatures; it has been blissfully cool on the lake.

Elaborate stained glass ceiling. There were no plans; the restoration artisans had to just guess.

Monday morning we loaded up with sunscreen and again ventured out in the tender, this time to Boldt Castle, the icon of the Thousand Islands region. Regular readers may recall that we skipped it on our first visit because the lake was so high that the docks were under water, and no private vessels were permitted to land (they built up the tour boat docks for the tours from Clayton, A-Bay, and Gananoque). These sorts of tourist attractions are seldom our thing, but we were anchored literally five minutes away, and when in Rome ...

Arriving by private boat, admission is quite reasonable, and we purchased the combined ticket for both the "castle" and the Yacht House on Wellesley Island. I won't bore you with the details of Boldt Castle and Heart Island, which you can read about on their official web site, among other places. I will just say that we enjoyed seeing the restoration in progress and strolling the well-kept grounds. We indulged in concession food for lunch and even ice cream.

Louise pointing to her namesake on a monument in A-Bay.

In the evening we tendered across the river to Alex Bay. The river was not flat calm, but it was certainly better than it had been all weekend. We landed at the large municipal dock on the west end of town, where we've landed before, and discovered there is now a $5 landing fee, which we handed to the dock attendant. We had a nice walk through town, ending up at the River House for dinner on the shaded patio. They had a nice selection of drafts, decent food leaning toward Italian, and a surprisingly good, freshly-filled cannolo, which I certainly did not need after a big dinner, but could not resist when the server suggested it.

Monday evening, after dinner, I took my well-laid plan for the return trip to New York, via some more Thousand Island cruising, and basically ripped up the first section, as the remains of Hurricane Beryl took aim at us. Long-time readers will know we've already been through more than a dozen tropical cyclones on this boat, so it's not really a big deal, but anchorages with all-around protection are few and far between here, and we needed to shift gears in order to have protection from forecast winds and waves. That planning turned the Thousand Island Club into the eastern terminus of our Thousand Islands cruise for the season.

Louise seated in the Vector-view Adirondack chairs on Casino Island.  You can just make out Vector across the river and between a pair of islands.

Tuesday morning we returned to Alex Bay, this time landing at the eastern town dock, which has no attendant and, evidently, no fee. We had a nice walk along the riverfront past the hospital and across the little bridge to Casino Island. We returned to the dock along the main drag for our final glimpse of town before heading out. We decked the tender just as another boat arrived to the anchorage and promptly dropped their anchor right on top of a marked submarine cable; I tried calling them on the radio several times to warn them.

We had a short cruise back up the American Narrows, turning right past the community of Thousand Island Park and making our way into the little bay on the south side of Picton Island, where we worked in as far as depth would allow and dropped the hook (map). There were a handful of day boats there, enjoying the shallows at the tip of the bay, but they were all gone by nightfall and we had the place to ourselves. This was the most scenic of our stops this visit, surrounded mostly by protected forest, with the lone house on the southwest point of the island barely in view.

It was already raining when I remembered to snap a photo of our lovely little bay on Picton Island.

This is a perfect spot in all but southwest wind, and that, of course, is what Beryl was forecast to bring starting in the middle of Wednesday. The pouring rain from the storm had already started overnight, and we remained in the little bay, all alone, until a lull in the rain mid-day, when we weighed anchor for the half-hour trip back to French Bay and Clayton, which was our best option for when the southwesterlies started.

We had the anchor down in French Bay, as far to the southwest as we could get (map), just before the rain started again in earnest. We were the only ones at anchor in what is normally a fairly busy bay, and there was almost no traffic in and out of the marinas. At least one moderately sized boat came in and took shelter on the inner side of the city dock. It came down in buckets through most of the afternoon.

Vector all alone in French Bay. That's the city dock in the foreground on the left.

In what seems to be a rare occurrence these days, reality was far milder than the forecast, and other than the rain, Beryl turned out to be mostly a non-event for us. I would not have wanted to be in the lake or river, but the harbor was comfortable the whole time. We were prepared to be pinned down aboard, but we even got a reprieve in the rain right at dinner time, and we splashed the tender and landed at the town dock in the bay (there was no way we were taking the tender out in the river, which was still way too rough).

The attendants who collect the $7 were nowhere to be found during the storm, and we walked a very wet two blocks to the Wooden Boat Brewery for dinner, where we grabbed the last two seats at the bar. The food was good -- I indulged in their tasty soft pretzels and a nice salad -- and we like their drafts. At dinner we learned Wednesday is "growler day," where growler fills are just $15, and after a brief walk I dropped Louise at Vector and returned with our growler for a half gallon of their excellent stout.

Drafts at the Wooden Boat Brewery.

We could have spent another night in Clayton, but we wanted to make a stop at Cape Vincent again on our way back, and we needed to beat the start of the annual French Festival if we wanted a spot at the dock. And so on Thursday morning we weighed anchor for the short 12-mile cruise, arriving right at noon. Our preferred spot, on the east bulkhead, was again occupied, this time by a pair of sailboats nose-to-tail, but the west bulkhead was open.

Our chart says there is a 6' hump on the way into that spot, and the charts have been off by +/- a foot in various places at this lake level. I worked my way into the space very, very slowly, during which time one of the sailboaters came over, offering to take lines. This is a nice gesture, common among boaters, but we seldom want help of unknown skill and so we politely waved him off, but he was not taking no for an answer. Beyond that, he wanted to ask 20 questions while we were both very focused on the task at hand, and we had to explain we were busy.

The slip turned out to be deeper than charted, and we had no trouble coming alongside. Louise lassoed three cleats in her usual fashion, and Mr. Poor Boundaries had commentary each time with complimentary words but in a condescending tone. When we finally were stopped and secure, right where we wanted to be (map), he asked me if I wanted to move the boat back to "make room for another boat" at the dock.

Vector hogging the dock in Cape Vincent.

When I said, no, we needed to be right where we were, he switched from asking to directing, basically telling us we had to move, and I just completely lost my cool. In a decade of doing this, I've snubbed a number of busy-bodies on the dock, but I've never screamed invective comprising words I can not repeat in a family-friendly blog, however this time I did. He finally marched away, muttering about how rude and unskilled we were.

For the record, we had ten feet behind us to the end of the pier, space we prefer to have to properly secure the stern with a "cross tie." The pier was 85' long, and we take up 56' of that, so "moving back" would have opened up perhaps 20' of usable space in front of us (the very end is too shallow, and you need at least a little room between boats for maneuvering and normal movement). This facility has a whole separate dock for boats that size, which was mostly empty. Not that any of that was any of his business, but if he had asked politely, I would have explained it to him.

Chairs already staked out on Thursday for Saturday's parade.

After he stomped away we no longer had to interact with him. Ironically, I am very nearly certain that Mr. "Make room for other boats" actually overstayed the 48-hour limit on the dock. He had clearly been there the night before we arrived, he was there with us our one night, and it appeared they would be staying for the festival. So I guess it's OK to preclude other boats by overstaying your welcome, but not by using too much dock.

We otherwise had a very pleasant stay in Cape Vincent. We had a couple of nice walks around town, and I stopped into the well-stocked French Towne Market for a couple of items, including more beer. It was interesting to see the whole town gearing up for their big annual festival, the bulk of which was to happen Saturday. That included a parade, and fireworks launched from the very seawall to which we tied a week earlier. Here on Thursday people had already set up their lawn chairs for the parade, perhaps a hundred of them. One of the locals told me people start staking out their perfect spot as early as Monday for a Saturday event. Of course, everything was drenched from Beryl. We walked to the Cape Vincent Brewing Company for dinner, where you get your beer at the bar and order your food at a window; both were good.

I kept running into this pair of Pekin ducks in Sawmill Bay, Chaumont.

With all of the hullabaloo, we briefly considered whether we wanted to stay through Saturday. But that would mean figuring out what to do when our own 48 hours ran out, and it would also likely mean then running straight from there to Oswego today, to catch this weather window before it slammed shut. We can picture exactly what the parade, fireworks, and cheese-ball vendor booths would look like, so we opted to continue on to our other planned stops on the lake instead. We did walk to breakfast at Ann's Fisherman's Fare, which was not worth repeating; in hindsight the Cup of Joy might have been a better choice.

From Cape Vincent it was a four hour cruise back to the lake, around the Point Peninsula (yes, that's really the name), and into Chaumont Bay, new territory for us. I wanted to see if we could get all the way to the village of Chaumont, but it was not looking promising, with a persistent SW swell following us all the way into the bay and then in to Sawmill Bay. Fortunately, the very last dogleg, ever so slight, was just enough to block it from the end of Sawmill Bay, and we dropped the hook there across from the Crescent Yacht Club (map).

Brand new town dock in Chaumont. Vector is center-frame.

Our guides did not show any sort of town dinghy landing, and neither did the satellite view, and so I was prepared to land the tender at the closest marina to town and maybe give them a few bucks to let us land. I saw a brand new dock attached to a town park, absent from the sat photo, that looked vaguely like a public dock, but there was no signage, and two boats with canvas covers on were at the dock and looking very much like permanent slipholders. I landed at the marina as planned and set off to find someone.

Lots of historic buildings in Chaumont; I only walked past a few of them.

I never found an employee -- the office was closed -- but one of the tenants told me that the dock I had seen was, indeed, the town dock and we could tie there, and so that's what I did. It was much closer to town than the marina, and immediately adjacent to one of our dinner options, Wise Guys Italian restaurant. While I was standing in front of the yet-to-open restaurant looking for hours and menus, Andy, the proprietor, opened the door, invited me in, showed me around, and took my reservation for seating at the bar -- the dining room was already fully booked.

The charming proprietor of Wise Guys, Andy, showing me the bar seating.

I walked the whole downtown, and about halfway into the historic district. There are four other restaurants here, a hardware store which I missed by mere minutes, a library, and a community center which was having a little farmers' market out front. There is a small but well stocked grocery, and I even found a massage place. A sign in town for ice fishing parking belies what it is like here in winter.

This little market was in front of the community center on my walk. Amish gentleman at left was selling produce, preserves, and baked goods. I presume they arrived in the wagon at left, but I did not see a horse. Perhaps there is a paddock behind the center.

We returned ashore together at dinner time. Wise Guys was as good as its reputation, and we enjoyed dining in the bar. Restaurant checks here are almost shockingly low. We had a short walk afterward, marveling at the raging post-Beryl torrent that was Horse Creek, which empties into the bay right next to the town dock by way of a waterfall. We could easily have spent another night here, sampling one of the other eateries and maybe trying to book a massage, but once again the rapidly closing weather window for crossing the lake forced our hand and we opted to move along.

The small but complete supermarket in town.

This seems like a remote and sparsely populated part of the state, with the waterfront itself being the bulk of development, so I was surprised in the morning when not one, but two different photos of Vector in Sawmill Bay popped up on my Facebook feed, from some Great Loop hopefuls who were wondering what the boat was and what we were doing there. I gather they don't get many big cruising boats here; even Andy the restaurateur, a boater himself, had inquired if we were "the big boat in the middle of the bay." A number of people who follow us had jumped in and outed us before I even saw the discussion.

We always seem to anchor in the middle of sailing school. This photo got posted to the Great Loop group on Facebook after we arrived. Photo: Amanda Miller.

We weighed anchor yesterday morning for the two-hour cruise to Sackets Harbor by way of Guffin Bay. Sackets was our very first port of call (aside from Oswego, where we entered) in the Great Lakes on our first trip through five years ago. Things were a lot busier on this visit, between it being later in the season and the water level being more normal. We dropped the hook in almost the exact same place (map). Just as then, we found the bottom to be rock, claims to the contrary in the cruising database notwithstanding, but we got enough purchase to be comfortable with a pile of heavy chain out.

The weeds are a theme here in the lake.

The village has just installed brand new visitor docks along the park seawall that formerly was a free day-use bulkhead. The visitor docks are also day use, with the village charging $10 for four hours, effective this month.  That dissuaded us from trying them, and we landed the tender instead at the little-known public dock adjacent the Sackets Boathouse restaurant. To get ashore from this dock, one walks through the Boathouse's dining patio, leading us to initially think it was their dock, and so that's where we ate. It was fine, but there are better choices in town. Later we confirmed the dock is public; I remember using it on our last visit when this restaurant was closed. The public dock sign was under water at the time.

This sign was underwater below the dock on our last visit.

After dinner we took a nice stroll through town, refreshing our memories and stopping at a park stand for ice cream. We walked over to check out the new city docks, and that's when we learned that the new pumpout is not yet working, and the village is not yet collecting fees. We found the water working on the docks, and so we hatched a plan to return this morning, fill our tank, and do some laundry. On our way back to Vector we sounded the long face dock and found plenty of depth.

Another Vector view from our dinner table, this time at Sackets Boathouse.

And so it was that this morning we weighed anchor and were tied up at the city dock by 8am. We spent a little over an hour filling the tank, which takes longer when simultaneously running the washer, and while that was happening I hoofed it down to Chrissy's Beanz for a couple of breakfast sandwiches. The place was packed with participants in the girl's lacrosse tournament going on in town, the 1812 Shootout.

Vector on the new face dock in Sackets Harbor. Smaller slips in foreground.

Update: We're tied up to the guide wall between locks O-8 and O-7 in Oswego, NY (map). I had to stop working on the blog about an hour from the harbor so I could rig everything for lowering the mast. Once we reached the harbor we dropped a lunch hook off-channel, lowered the mast, and then proceeded into the Oswego Canal. There are places along the bulkhead to tie downstream of O-8, too, but one of the waterfront hotels manages them and charges $1 per foot. This spot is free.

The line, and the array of tempting pastries, at Chrissy's Beanz.

We are here a couple of days earlier than planned, and we would have loved to spend those days still in the Thousand Islands. But the lake will be a miserable mess tomorrow and beyond; as it was, we bashed into two-footers for half of today even though the forecast was for one footers. Our mail is already enroute to Fulton, upriver from here, and if we got pinned down in, say, Henderson Harbor for a few days, we could easily miss the three-day window that the UPS Access Point will hold it.

We scooped this 3' tall Mylar "S" balloon out of the lake under way today.

Now, of course, we have to slow-roll a bit to not be there before the mail, so we'll stay right here for our full two-day allotment. I'll use the time tomorrow to get some errands done. Tonight we wandered to The Press Box sports bar, one of the three joints in walking distance that is open on a Sunday evening.