The Island

Wasn't there some horror movie called 'The Island'? Let me tell you about a happy and peaceful island where we anchored on Thursday night of our vacation. Now that I have a computer again I can resume being a good blogger and actually, you know, post.
Thursday morning found us still moored in Plattsburgh with a disassembled shower drain pump. Luckily the Plattsburgh Boat Basin has a really good ship's store. (Where the hell did they get those rolls of paper towels from? I never seen any that large. I'll have them until the end of time!) Todd had ripped out the old and malfunctioning pump and replaced it. Then we learned that we needed to replace the drain hose for fear that it's clogged with coagulated hair and soap. And what the hell, while we're in there let's just rewire the thing and call it done.  We've gotten pretty good at projects like this. We can do them relatively quickly and we know exactly how to accomplish these tasks. We untied our self-made mooring and headed south.

We picked Spoon Bay on the northeast corner of the island for our spot to anchor on Thursday night. The wind either blows dead north or dead south on Champlain because the lake is so narrow and it has mountains on either side. As we were headed to Valcour Island it was coming out of the south, but we knew that over night it would pull a 180 and come out of the north overnight. But we are confident in our anchor and miles of chain and knew it wouldn't be a problem.

We settled in for the night. Todd occasionally gets up to check on the anchor while I am asleep. (And then he has to shove me back to my side of the bed because sleeping me always sprawls the moment he leaves our bed.) I woke up and felt Sabine rocking harder than when we went to sleep.

"It's really blowing out there, wind's changed direction," Todd whispered to me. I grumbled "Mmmm hmmmm..." and probably said "Shhhh.... sleeping" because that's what I always say when he wakes me up in the middle of the night.

At around 5 in the morning Sabine was getting tossed around like a bathtub toy. Our bed is in the very back of the boat. If you picture a boat rocking on waves you'll see that the very center of the boat moves the least, and the very back and the very front move up and down with greater frequency. I couldn't fall back asleep with all the motion. I wanted to. I burrowed deeper into the covers willing the wind to die down until I drifted off again.

Sunrise came, we took the dogs ashore for their morning business meeting. We met a woman walking her dogs and asked her what was on the island. "Nothing but trails. It's beautiful. You really need to check it out." We shrugged, knowing we had some miles to cover that day to get closer to Chipman Point on the southern part of the lake. And then the "When are we going to be here next?" question hung between us.

We walked the shortest trail while the dogs raced out in front, then ran back to see what was taking us so long. They do this when we hike. They run out in front on the trail, and come back and circle us in their excitement. They probably hike four times the actual distance we cover every time we're in the woods.

Once back in the dinghy we marveled at the pristine, uninhabited paradise we were leaving that morning and wished we could stay longer. We pulled up the anchor and headed south to Cole Bay, instead.