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Valcour Island
N 44 37.86 W 073 24.410

Well here we are. We are anchored at the epicenter of our favorite place of all. We are at Valcour Island, near the landing where we put ashore to go camping. 30 years ago, I learned to love cruising by taking a week vacation around October 1 each year to bring my boat to Lake Champlain and cruise for a week. Valcour Island was always the high point of the trip. It is a real jewel. Later, in the 1990s, Libby and I came camping on Valcour in early October three or four times.

As we sailed down the lake today, familiar sights came in to view. First Jay Peak where David and I used to ski. Then Chazy Landing where Libby's aunts and uncles lived and where she spent happy summers in her youth. Then we passed the place where I marked an X in the water to mark the spot where John Undrill and I nearly drowned. Soon after we could see Mount Mansfield (which Libby and I climbed), Camel's Hump (which we climbed several times), Split Rock Point, Willsboro Bay (the summer camp
of Bob and Carol, dear friends), Whiteface Mountain (1980 Winter Olympics), and Lyon Mountain. A few weeks ago, we saw Lyon mountain to our southeast. Today it is to our west. Anyhow, we're in home waters. We can name the mountains, the islands, the bays, and we don't need to consult the charts for depth. I know the rocks and shoals by heart.

We have chosen the life of perpetual travel. We love it. Still, traveling to exotic places does not diminish the delight of returning to home waters. If we go through Panama with the intention of sailing around the world, it means we won't see these places again for five or more years.

Yesterday, we stopped at Lighthouse Point, the first marina in Rouses Point. We wanted fuel, a pump out, and we needed to clear customs. We did all three, and then they said that they could help us put up our mast also. Hooray for that! We moved the boat over to the crane and with the help of two of their men, we put the mast back up. In my opinion though they made it too complicated. Instead of reversing what we did to take it down, they made me remove the back stay (that has never been detached
before. I had to undo the wire attachment for the SSB radio antenna and cut all the nice stand-offs that hold the wire away from the stay. We also had to remove everything attached to the pin rails. We never did that before. Then they took the mast and stays up on land, put it on a wheeled cart and turned it over and around 180 degrees. Then they brought it back and we erected it. It took much longer than usual for us to put things back, and so far I found four errors we made in re-rigging her.
Tsk tsk. (Today, as we raised the main, the topping lift broke. It was twisted around the main halyard. That's one of the errors.)

The marina was also expensive. They charged us $180 to step the mast. Heretofore, we've paid $45 to $150 for mast stepping. We spent the night at their slip to work on re-rigging. $1.50 per foot for the slip -- high for Lake Champlain. Then I did an oil change and the marina wanted to charge me $10 to dispose of a gallon of old oil. That's more than new oil costs. The marina does provide good service, but I think they are expensive mainly because they appear to have a totally multilingual
staff. All the other boats coming and going while we were there were French speaking.

I got on the Internet last night. First time in quite a while. I found that some things never change:

The headline on today's Dagens Nyheter (Sweden's biggest newspaper) was: "The Sun Will Come Next Weekend" The story said,
"Hold on. Next Saturday and Sunday will will be sunny and warm in the whole country. But only temporarily. It is not really a high pressure but a pause between two low pressures." We remember very well how the weather in Sweden was often a big disappointment.

I also read a story about Schenectady; another former home of ours. The city is trying to harass a B&B owner who allows his guests to have sex parties. City cops are running checks on all license plate numbers of cars parked in his lot. The owner is complaining about abuse of police power. The joke to this is that as long as we can remember, Schenectady has been trying to eliminate all sex businesses via sneaky and possibly illegal tactics. Certainly ineffective tactics. The city government
there has always been singularly inept.