We returned to Wiarton on the Monday only to find most of the shops and services close on the Monday’s too during the off season. 

We called into a real estate office but they do not handle the cottages. We called a few phone numbers listed on the outside of buildings and chatted to anyone who showed any interest in us.

I had noticed that the local lolly shop did airb&b and we wondered, if they didn’t have any bookings, they might be able to do something for the weeks before the summer season started.  We tried going in to ask but they were also closed.

It was about this time we had noticed the local Foodland supermarket sold hot takeaway food and coffee for $1.00.  
So off we went for a bowl of hot Chilli soup and a bread roll.  The first time we had bought soup and bread rolls from them we hadn’t noticed the sitting area and ate in the smelly car but we soon cottoned on to the warm dining area with free Wi Fi and a bathroom.  The soup was hot and tasty they also do fried chicken and hot chips so Craig was extra happy. 

To make contact I had to go through airb&b and enquire about a pretend booking.  airb&b automatically block phone numbers and email addresses so it was looking impossible to get through,  I received a reply,  yes.  it was the lolly shop they messaged " we are home - at the rear of the shop why don’t you call in".

We entered into a lovely garden where we were greeted by a man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, this was Todd, we were to learn that this is Todd’s uniform Summer and Winter,  he made me feel colder just looking at him. 

We were invited inside to a lovely cosy apartment under Northern Confections.  Todd is a born and raised Bruce Peninsula local, Heather hails originally from Nova Scotia, they purchased the building approx 5 years ago and as Todd is a trained confectioner they opened their lolly/ice cream and coffee shop. It’s a very cute shop and they sell the best maple syrup covered popcorn and maple syrup fudge ever,  Craig who has now admitted to buying a little square of fudge every time he went  to the  mini mart  in Cowes, was beside himself. 

There are 2 apartments above the shop that Heather airb&b's over Summer but rents to doctors from the local hospital over the quiet Winter months, both top apartments were being used.  But they had a spare room and we were very welcome to move in!!

As we all found it difficult to talk money Heather said she would txt us an amount.  As we were driving back to Owen Sound we received a txt with a very reasonable rate, we said yes.

It was a bit weird driving away from the Owen Sound airb&b in their sons car, Canadians are very trusting.

We piled our belongings into the bedroom, the bed was really comfortable, the house was lovely and warm, a constant 23c and we had a new friend in Izzy.

Izzy is a  Poodle cross Bichon, she is a rescue dog that  had her back broken when she was a puppy. Heather spent months doing physio on her legs and got her walking again, she now runs around almost as good as if nothing had happened to her, she is very cute and very loved.

Our first weekend in Wiarton -  it dumped down snow, really heavy snow, the snow did not stop for 2 days solid.... we still went out walking and even went to a Rotary fundraiser on the Sunday, it was at an Elk Farm that collected processed and produced maple syrup. 

We were actually very lucky to be in this area at this time of year as maple syrup production was in full swing and we were given a few jars of maple syrup from various people we met along the way including a 2litre bottle from Bill Adianas now previous owner.

The trip to the elk farm was an adventure it was only a 10 minute drive but in the heavy falling snow it seemed to take forever, we slid off the road at one point but luckily Craig didn’t miss a beat and guided the car back on to the road without stopping and with no damage. Thank goodness, if we had had to stop and wait for help we would have froze we were very unequipped for adventuring out in the snow.  

I had bought a pair of cheap $15 boots that I discovered on that day they were not waterproof, everyday from then on I wore plastic bags over my socks and the boots worked a treat, I remember doing this growing up in the snow in Scotland.  Craig on the other hand was getting by with normal everyday runners. 

There is a very cute video of us on the tractor ride to the area where the activities were, we had maple syrup waffles, maple taffy, watched a two person log sawing competition, stood around a fire and learnt about maple syrup production. I thought I was going to die on the tractor ride back to the car I was so cold.

You can go to our zencrasailing Facebook page to see more...

Bill and Shoni very graciously allowed us access to Adriana so we stowed our suitcases and “summer clothes” away. Bill still had to clear out his belongings, we were very lucky to be gifted a number of useful guides and maps from Bill.

We quickly organised for Steven to send our boxes to the Marina address.  They arrived in about 10 days which was a relief as the cost to send them was over $1000.00 .  Inside was Craig’s wet weather sailing gear, some smaller tools, a stack of sailing books that Craig had treated himself to when we sold the garden supply business, we also shipped our Thermomix which we probably won’t be able to use as Canada and USA use differently ampages to Australia.

So then it was a waiting game waiting for the weather to warm up and the ice to melt. 

We had one particular part of a park that we would visit most days to check the progress, it seemed to take forever but in reality it was less than a month before we saw the ice melt completely.

We walked most days and wondered at nature awakening from its Winter sleep to blossoming spring. The Bruce Peninsula had experienced up to -20C over Winter.

We had to pay for Adriana which proved to be harder than it should have been.  We had most of the money in a Wells Fargo US account that we planned to transfer to pay for the boat.  The problem was transferring money from US to Canada and we were Australian and there was no Wells Fargo branch we could access.  Eventually we worked out a way to manage this.  It it involved us transferring money to Kelly the American broker who then transfer it to Jack, the Canadian broker who then paid Bill plus we had to split the payments due to daily limits.  I was very stressful having our money out there in cyberspace for what seemed like forever.  Then we had the same problem with the payment from Australia to Canada but eventually all monies were transferred and on the 29th March 2019 we settled and we finally owned Adriana 1.  

having a celebratory champagne with Todd and Heather

The next issue was that we wanted to register her as an Australian vessel.  To get our registration we had to wait for the Canadian registration cancellation to come through, we needed to have the bill of sale, forms had to be completed with things like hull measurement, tonnage and mast to bottom of keel measurement. We had to have a Public Notary sign the forms.  We were lucky the lawyer in the practice up the road from Northern Confections was also a public notary and he agreed to sign them for us for $25.00 but said “no charge” after he had completed the signing so we left the $25 with Todd and Heather to run a coffee tab for him and his lovely receptionist who is his wife.  

In Australia before we left we had to pay $200 (and that was half of what he should have charged us) for a Public Notary to sign forms on the closure of property we sold in the USA, we had to use him twice.

We posted off the originals to Australia and crossed our fingers they would arrive quickly.

I had sent off an anniversary card, a couple of birthday cards and a couple of packages of treats to our boys, when we first arrived in Canada and they actually never arrived in Australia. so I was rather nervous of the Canadian Postal service.

We had to find international health insurance, this was highlighted when Craig had a bout of gout, he is on medication and the medication required a back up dosage, so after about  4 days of pain we headed to the local doctor, who worked out of the local hospital. Well we were stopped in our tracks it was going to cost us up to $500 to see the doctor then we would still have to get the prescription filled, Craig knew what medication he required.  

We had walked there and Craig was in a lot of pain, he nearly cried.

After talking to Heather we found out there was a walk in clinic in Owen Sound that us “out of country folk” could visit at a cost of $50, woo hoo, we did have our original travel insurance but really all we needed was to have a prescription filled. The doctor was very thorough and Craig was in there for almost half an hour, the doctor went through the problem and upped his dosage.  The local chemist was also incredibly thorough, she even phoned Craig to check he understood the medication.

We wore our Aldi thermals every day and night for the first three weeks.  As we knew the weather would warm up and we would not need “snow gear “ we were a bit reluctant to invest too much money in really thick winter clothes.  

I was offered by Sue one of Heathers friends that she would purchase some clothes from the shop she worked in that was closing down, then with her staff discount the price was even lower, so through Sue I acquired 2 pairs of lovely thick fleecy leggings, 2 nice thick cream jumpers and a puffer jacket, I also picked up a few pieces from the local thrift shop.

I would say we collected about a dozen food containers, a chopping board, ice block trays and even a cocktail shaker for $2.00 from the Local Salvation Army op shop in town. Adriana had been purchased with a fair amount of kitchen items but we also did a few trips in the bong mobile to Walmart and Canadian Tire to help fit her out.

Craig bought electric tools, Allan keys, tapes, sandpaper, wrenches, hammer, etc, mostly the same items that we had given away or stored back home.  We did need to invest in imperial tools such as tape measure and wrench set as Adriana was American built and we required tools in inches and feet to work on her.

While we had the car we did one big grocery shop $500 worth of cans of soup, baked beans, canned veggies, pasta sauce, rice, pasta, condiments, cleaning products, toilet rolls etc.  all those things like salt and paper worchestir sauce, tomato sauce we had to start from scratch.  

We held on to the bong mobile for a couple of weeks but it really was a bomb and felt unsafe, we didn’t want it to break down or fall apart on us so we delivered it back to Owen Sound.

We had the very generous offer of using Todd and Heathers car if we needed it and as we felt we had done the bulk of the provisioning and the larger items, we were happy to walk back and forth from the supermarket, hardware etc.