Jack Tar Adventures

Note to my subscribers (all 12 of you!): I have chosen not to send emails each time I publish a post so that I don’t clutter your inboxes. But when I do send an email, you can always go back to the log entries for any date.

Tues June 16:  It was a gorgeous, clear, cool day, but very windy, so we were glad we chose to take the tour boat to Boldt Castle, so we didn’t have to dock ourselves. The boat ride through the Thousand Islands area was stunning!  The crystal clear, blue water and rocky cliffed islands made it easy to see why the very rich developed the area so quickly, soon after the Civil War. Every house we saw was magnificent in its own right, running the gamut from Victorian cottages to Gilded Age houses to sleek modern steel and glass. Many houses were on their own small islands.

The tour boat made a stop at Boldt Castle on Heart Island. The castle was commissioned in 1900 by George C. Boldt, the wealthy proprietor of the Waldorf Astoria, as a summer home and tribute to his wife, Louise, on Valentine’s Day. He envisioned an extravagant, six-story, 120-room Rhineland-style castle. No expense was spared. The grandiose design included intricate Italian gardens, a drawbridge, a dovecote, underground tunnels, and a powerhouse built to mimic a medieval tower. But in 1904, Louise died suddenly, and a heartbroken Boldt halted construction, and the 120-room estate sat abandoned for 73 years.

In 1977, the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority acquired Heart Island and the remaining estate. They began an extensive multi-million dollar restoration effort to repair the deteriorating masonry and finish the castle’s interiors. There are still two floors that haven’t been restored. Each of the restored rooms has pictures of what they looked like before work started.

Peter and I took too many pictures to post, so I put them all in a link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/DgVanT371WfDvh957

Wed June 17: We had hoped to check in with Canadian customs in the town of Gananoque today, but their marina is all booked for an event through Saturday. Since they are the only marina option on the Canadian side of the Thousand Islands, we will stay put in Clayton for now.

Peter went to the Antique Boat Museum, where he saw, among other things, the Boldt’s houseboat La Duchesse: https://www.abm.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/La-Duchesse-2-2048×1365.jpg

We walked to a sweet little restaurant in Clayton that was right on the St. Lawrence River.

Thurs June 18: Today, thunderstorms and high winds were gusting to 40 mph, so I chose to get myself off the rocky boat to a coffee shop and update the blog. Peter and I have been walking around like a couple of drunk sailors. We’re so used to adjusting to the pitch of the boat that the land feels like it’s rolling us around.

Fri June 19: Thus far, we’ve been one of the very few boats in the marinas and in the locks. Partly because it’s early in the season and partly, we think, because we were lucky to be ahead of the lock closure back on the Erie early on. The dockmaster here in Clayton says it’s been very slow for them this season because about 60% of their business is Canadian, and that both last year and this year, Canadian boats simply aren’t coming to the U.S. Don’t blame them. When we arrived here in Clayton on Tuesday, we were one of only three other boats. Since then, many of the boats stuck behind the lock closure caught up to us, and several more arrived before the high winds on Thursday.

A few of the boats here, we’ve seen a couple of times since we were in Cape May. Most of them are loopers. One is a family of five traveling on a boat called a Sealine. It’s a very nice 34′ motor yacht called Take Five, but it’s gotta be pretty crowded for two adults and three children. Mom works full-time from the boat, and Dad quit his job so they could do the loop, which usually takes about a year. The three kids who are about ages 10-15 are being homeschooled during the trip. My hat goes off to them! They are making it work, and now I am only feeling half loopy 🙂

The family of five is the exception, though. Most of the other loopers are old couples like us. It’s been interesting to see the temporary boating communities form and reform as we meet at different marinas and city docks, and to talk to other boaters about the choices they have made and the priorities they have set.

Sat June 20: We walked around town again today and stopped to watch the dog-jumping contest. It is quite the event. A lot like kids sporting tournaments with lots of pop-up tents and dog crates. A Belgian Malinois jumped the farthest that we watched at 22.5 feet.

We’ve been getting used to cooking meals on the boat again. Tonight, we had a delicious steak with baked sweet potato and sauteed zucchini, onion, and yellow pepper. It included any choice of red or white wine, as long as that choice was on the boat.