The Adventures of Monk's Vineyard - The Great Loop and Beyond: August 12, Day 60

Linda got up early and walked this morning. She couldn’t pass up a gorgeous morning and the 4 mile long trail between the locks. We had a quick breakfast and were ready to go by the time the locks opened.

After a non eventful, but pretty boat ride across Lake Simcoe, we stopped for fuel at a marina in the Narrows. There was major current here that challenged the crew while maneuvering to the fuel dock, but we have learned a few tricks in dealing with wind and current and had a pretty slick landing. We arrived in Orillia about 1:00 and checked in.

We grabbed lunch at “Studabakers”. Good burger and sandwiches (made better with a beer and Cuba Libre). While there, I decided to check email via the cell phone and found out that they were going to ship Linda’s new Electric bike to us here in the marina, but only if we could call them by 2:00 – it was 1:30. (Did we mention that Linda finally agreed to get one?) They needed the address for the marina. Linda went back over to the office to get the address and check to see if our mail had arrived from our mail forwarding company.

Our mail was here and we had a few surprises that we had to deal with right away. One was a notice that since our boat insurance had expired, the bank had decided that we had defaulted on our loan. The insurance had been renewed, but the company neglected to send that information to the loan company. A phone call and a faxed copy of the insurance policy took care of that one. Hmm, wonder if they had tried to find the boat lately???

We had a similar note from our home mortgage company – Linda dealt with that one.
We have decided that we hate mail. It took us most of the afternoon to deal with “stuff”. What a lousy way to spend a beautiful day.

After taking care of most of those details, Gerry started finalizing the rental car arrangements to pick up Steve & Karen at Toronto on Saturday. Whoops, no rental cars available anywhere in the immediate area for the next two weekends. That wasn’t what we were told about a month ago when we called to make reservations (don’t need no stinking reservations – we always have cars up here). After several web searches, he was able find a reasonable solution. Simcoe County Airport Shuttle Service has routes between here and Toronto as well as Midland, where we are dropping off Steve & Karen after a week on the Trent-Severn and Georgian Bay. Problem solved, thank goodness for WiFi and the internet (the folks at the marina were not aware of this service).

With the sun blazing away, it didn’t take long for the temps to get into the 90’s, so we took advantage of the electrical available here and cranked on the AC. That allowed Linda to update the blog while Gerry fiddled with his new charts of Georgian Bay.

Later in the day, a boat pulled up in the slip across from us. It was an "ex-looper" (John and Gail Thomassen on Our Time). They had finished the loop about 2 weeks ago. They lived in Bobcaygeon and were headed for Georgian Bay for awhile. They shared all kinds of information concerning that area.

We finally headed out for a bite to eat around 8:00. Had some good Thai food and then went back to the boat. Linda finished blogging and banking and Gerry went to bed.

Tomorrow, we start oil changes, boat washing, and trying to stash stuff so that Steve & Karen have a place to stay on the boat.