Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Gan

From the August cruise.... We had some rain last night, and the wind kicked up a bit, but we were secure at the dock. I do prefer anchoring over docking, but this will do :) We have a cloudy overcast day, and I will try to find some Wi-Fi to upload all of this to the blog. I hope we can make use of the bikes today. Yesterday while we were trying to enter the marina, we had a flotilla of powerboats buzzing around the entrance. Next door to Gan. Municipal Marina, there is another marina with a gas doc, and there had to be hundreds of boats trying to get fuel. We had to thread the needle to get into the harbor. People were cutting in front of us, and cutting us off. They didn't care if I crushed them. We get up close to the entrance, and I see all these boats with flags on them. Big flags of yellow and orange. Wait a minute, those are the flags for the finish line of the damn poker run! What brainless boob decides to have a finish line right at the entrance to the harbor! What if there was an emergency? We got through the chaos, and were docked. Ten minutes later and the first water missile came across the finish line, with a chase helicopter flying about 50 ft overhead. What a lot of noise. The boats were kind of awesome though. Such power. They throw up a huge rooster tail of water. I wonder if the kayakers they run over get thrown up into the rooster tail? All the pretty french Canadians, and their pretty clean boats had to put up with my dirty sailboat, with it's weeds and mud all over the anchor, which was hanging over the dock. A couple of dedicated followers of fashion were walking by and pointed, commented, then laughed at the mud and weeds. They looked over at me, with a weeks worth of beard, ripped shorts, and a hogs breath t-shirt, and said something derogatory in french. I went and looked at the boat they came off of, and it looks like the anchor just came out of the factory. I wouldn't be surprised if it had a coat of wax on it. Just another floating cottage. I haven't been here 24 hrs, and one guy has washed his boat three times. We got out the bikes today, and went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. After dropping off the bags, we set out for lunch. We biked around a while, and finally settled on the Gananoque Inn. The Inn has a nice upscale restaurant, and a bar/grill. We wanted the Bar and Grill side, but entered the wrong door, and were in the swanky joint. My backpack had left a nice big sweat mark on the whole back of my shirt, and I looked pretty ragged. I marched right in, and asked for a seat on the patio. "We have a limited menu for this afternoon", said the hostess. "No problem", I said, and Deb followed me onto the white linen tabled patio. We took our seats, and Deb said, "I think you wanted that patio", pointing over to the bar/grill, where people were laughing, drinking beer, and having a good time. Damn. The waiter looked a little surprised when I said, "No thanks", to the menu, and we walked out. We had a nice lunch at the bar, and sampled a local beer called "River Rat Red". Not bad, but I had some difficulty getting back on the bike, and yelled over to Deb, "beer and bikes don't mix!". Of course there was a cop right next to her, that I did not spot. He just glanced over and left. We had to stop at the Beer Store, so now I was on the bike with a buzz, and a twelve pack of molson in my backpack. If a car hits me, I will explode in beer foam. We have a nice Caliber 40 next to us in the marina. Nice people. They are three years ahead of us in our quest to sail away. The Wi-Fi is out again. WTF III.