O Canada

We are under way downbound, which is to say generally northeast, in the St. Lawrence River. We are in the Thousand Islands, now on the Canadian side. Today's cruise will bring us closer to the "point of no return," where we must commit to completing the Down East Circle because the current will be too strong for us to turn around.

Passing Singer Castle in the ship channel. We're "passing through" US waters today; on our last visit we stopped here with the gift shop under water.

Wednesday afternoon we arrived in Cape Vincent around 4pm, and what a difference from our last visit. We once again tied up at the NY Department of Environmental Conservation fisheries research station, this time at the proper dock across from the R/V Seth Green (map). That dock was awash on our last visit and we had tied to the floating T-head, nominally for fishing only, instead.

Still concerned about the Canadians seizing our food, we again dined on board, but I was pleased to see that the Roxy, where we ate on our last visit, is still open and doing a booming business. New in town is the Twist of Cape ice cream shop, and we strolled there after dinner for ice cream cones the size of softballs. They, too, were doing a booming business, even at 8pm as rain was just starting to fall.

Vector tied to the DEC fisheries dock, across from R/V Seth Green.

In the morning we awoke to the sound of trawl doors banging around on the concrete pier. It turned out the Seth Green was making ready for a research mission, and they needed to change out mid-level doors for bottom-trawling doors. Louise, who was up early, chatted with the crew before they shoved off.

Historic DEC fisheries building.

After lunch we dropped lines for the short two-hour cruise to Clayton. We dropped the hook in the harbor of French Creek Bay (map), just a hundred yards or so further out than last time owing to the lower lake level. Surprisingly we had the anchorage to ourselves, at least for the first night.

I liked this reflected sunset from our anchorage in Clayton.

We had hoped to splash the tender and head ashore for dinner, but the weather had other plans and a rain storm moved through in the afternoon. It turned out to be mostly gone by dinner time, but we already had dinner ready aboard. We had a fairly quiet night in the harbor.

Friday our mail arrived, and after lunch we loaded a giant box of quilts in the dink and headed around the peninsula to the Clayton Marina, which had a UPS drop, before returning to the town dock along the Seaway. The dock was extremely busy but we found a spot, walking the few blocks to the post office to pick up our mail, in a repeat of our very first visit here, and drop an oil sample in the mail. The town was busy enough that we popped in to a couple of restaurants on our way back to the dock to try to book a table for the evening.

Clayton fireboat showing off.

We soon learned that the reason for the crowds, apart from any pleasant tourist weekend here, was a pair of enormous weekend events in town, the Bassmaster Elite Series and the Aqua-Mania Thousand Islands Charity Poker Run . Every dock in town was fully booked for the pair of events. We returned for a 7pm dinner at DiPrinzios and were glad we had made reservations.

With our mail in hand and the last box of ready-to-ship quilts offloaded, there was nothing to keep us on the US side of the border, and so Saturday morning we decked the tender and made ready to cross. We did still have a bit of fresh food and a possibly dutiable amount of alcohol, but we remembered that being no problem the last time, and we were willing to part with it rather than hover in the US another few days.

We were a bit far and at the wrong angle for a good shot, but all those rooster tails are the go-fast boats from the Poker Run.

I had learned from the online schedule that the Donzi/Cigarette boat rally was due to take off from the east end of town right at 10, and so we had the anchor up and were under way by 9:45. We still had to dodge and weave dozens of spectator boats, including the town fireboat putting on a show. We made it safely across the channel and out of the line of fire in time to watch the first wave pass us by a good distance away.

I had filled out our Canadian customs and ship's stores forms Friday afternoon, along with entering our vaccination records into the ArriveCan app run by the health department. While I had them out I also updated our new passport numbers into the CBP ROAM app for our return, and also purchased our DTOPS decal. ArriveCan insisted I give them a local address where we'd be staying, so I just listed the city marina, which was close to the dinghy dock.

Vector at the customs dock in Gananoque.

We hoisted the "Q" flag under way, and by 11:30 we were tied alongside the CBSA dock (map) in Gananoque (rhymes with "knock way"). The little CBSA office appears to have been closed for some time, perhaps only open for cruise ships, and there was not even a phone. I ended up clearing in from my cell phone back aboard. Just as last time they cleared all of our bar stock, and we had no food that was of concern to them. They gave us a clearance number to post in our window until we leave the country.

The view of Gananoque from our anchorage.

The CBSA dock is also a two-hour free day dock, and after getting our clearance we took a short stroll around the waterfront area, scoping out the dinghy dock in the marina basin and the handful of business near the tour boat dock. Then we cast off and drove less than half a mile to a buildup of silt downstream of McDonald Island and dropped the hook (map).

It was just 12:30 when we had the hook set, but we were quite done for the day. The underlying stress of being ready for a border crossing, perhaps exacerbated by numerous contentious dealings with US CBP in the past, had taken its toll, and the release of all that tension wiped us out. We tendered back ashore in the evening and walked into town for dinner at Anthony's. Live music was just wrapping up in the town park across the street.

When in Canada ...

The town also has a waterfont park, with a band shell that looks for all the world like a Pringle, and even after we returned home we were serenaded by live music well into the evening. After dark, which is late up here, things got very quiet, and we had a very comfortable night. Moonrise was spectacular, but I do not have a camera which could capture it. No one anchors in the river here, and we were all alone.

As I wrap up typing, we've left behind the last of the Thousand Islands, and the town of Brockville, which had been our target stop. We've had such a favorable current that we decided to press on to a protected anchorage just beyond the much smaller town of Prescott, to give us more leeway in the morning to make the Iroquois Lock.