July 22, 2008: Hurst Marina near Manotick, Ontario

Today Tom told me that we would not see much. We cast off before 8:00 a.m. to cruise the 15 miles to the Hurst Marina. We were delighted to find an extensive Meridian maintenance facility, the largest in eastern Canada, here on the canal to have some minor repairs done. So we saw the lovely early morning still water as we advanced down the canal. As we were cruising, we saw a boat coming from the other direction stop and turn around. I did not notice anything in the water at first, but when the boat “hit it” I saw that there was an athlete in the water. She was dressed in a wet suit, but had no skies... it was amazing to watch her sit on the water and then come up to a standing position on her bare feet. We followed at a distance, and stopped to applaud the lithe blonde girl after she fell... her lifejacket said “Team Canada” on it, so we weren’t sure who she was, but perhaps a future World Champions water skier. Perhaps she is following in the footsteps of Pat Messner, the first and only Canadian woman to win an Olympic medal in waterskiing and is now a coach for the Team Canada adaptive team near Ottawa.

Then at Hurst Marina we have been docked all day – similar to waiting at home for the washing machine repairman... He didn’t come today, but maybe tomorrow. We decided that we needed to have electricity since we will be here until the maintenance is done. Unfortunately there is no 50 Amp connection where we are, so Tom bought us a “step down” so we can plug into a 30 Amp. Now it is interesting that when we use too much electricity, the lights in the boat dim.

With a little bit of cabin fever, we took the dinghy out tonight back down the canal for dinner. There was a river side café, Kelly’s Landing, about 4 miles down the way. It took about 30 minutes to putter to the place where there was a visitor’s dock and a table waiting overlooking the water for supper. We saw several other water skiers tonight but these had skies. It stays light really late (the later the farther North you are), so they were still in the water as we came home around 8:30 pm.