Kingston  

We slept from 4pm straight through to 6am, I don’t think I moved all night.  

Our destination today is Collins Bay where there is a marine shop we need to visit for some charts to get us down through the St Lawrence.  

Up early we were motoring into the marina that we had called ahead to book, as we were approaching the marina -  heading up an inlet we noticed that the depth showing on our instruments was shallower than what the chart plotter showed and we had 0.2 mt under the hull.  Ooops we had to quickly reverse out of there do a tight circle and basically just move on to the next Marina which was around the corner but miles away, 

The marina we had tried to get into was just down the road from the Marine shop!!  and no one had mentioned the depth when we booked i'd say it was a build-up of new growth weeds as apparently this can be a problem at this time of year.  

We radioed ahead and pulled into Kingston Confederation Basin Marina where we filled up with diesel, did a pump out and topped up with water

Once we were tied up, “life is so much easier when there are helpers on shore to catch the lines”  we quickly got ourselves ready and headed out to find the marine shop, the guys on the dock told us we should be able to catch a bus in that general direction.  

We need to buy chart books and other information for transiting down the St Lawrence, (that  includes the other 7 locks we have to go through) and a book showing tide times that we will need further down the St Lawrence as we reach salt water and tides. 

The Kingston Marina was opened by the Queen in 1976 for that years Olympic Games and it is built right next to the Kingston Penitentiary, which is no longer used as a prison but is open to the public as a tourist attraction.  It took me a few minutes to work out what side of the road we needed be on to look for a bus stop that would take us in the right direction I had forgotten about the cars driving on the other side !!

We didn’t have to wait too long, and the lady bus driver was great she told us when to get off and did an illegal stop for us so that we got off at the closest point to our destination.  $3.00 for a bus ticket and you can use it all day.

It was still another half hour walk to the shop and the sun was beating down.

The marine shop was a disappointment!  chock full of stuff but nothing that we had set out to buy….. Craig picked up a couple of shackles and we still managed to spend a small fortune but the charts, books, oil, filters and bits and pieces we needed were not in stock.  As we were asking the staff if there was an easier way back downtown another customer was in the process of ordering a taxi and he didn’t mind sharing it with us -  he had hired a pushbike and was not inclined to ride the bike back it was a lot further than he thought and probably about a 30 degree day.  The taxi dropped us off at the entrance to the Marina right next to a cute little pub, we couldn’t resist going in for a beer we ended up staying and having 2 and a burger for an early dinner.  I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get to visit downtown but we chose to go back to Adriana I especially have a much better sleep when we are tied up to a dock.

Saturday 3rd  August 2019

The next morning, we were up early and continued on our journey heading down the St Lawrence.  

Now this area is much busier with watercraft, there were jet skis, power boats, really fast power boats and a lot of what looked like floating cottages with engines.  We didn’t even attempt to sail there was no wind and it was hectic.  

Just to give you and idea of how busy it was !!

They look the same but are different clips

The closer we got to Brockville the busier the water was.  This is in the middle of an area called 1000 Islands Craig had to be on the ball following the red and green markers dodging the other boats and then we had River Cruise Boats sailing past as well. 

The Canadian side is much prettier than the American side with lots of cute cottages.  Many of the Islands are tiny with just one cottage on it but fully set up with dingy docks, pergolas and  swimming platforms with access steps.

Singer Castle over 100 yrs old

Cute Houses with the lot 

The statue of St Lawrence 

We passed Singer Castle built over 100 years ago by the Singer Sewing Machine family, we passed the statue of St Lawrence set high on an escarpment looking over the river and we passed so many huge mansions mostly on the Canadian side, we did criss cross a bit to look at each side.  

We reached our destination around 4pm and set the anchor down behind a small island  - Smith Island, I think we were in a very exclusive part of town as there was a seaplane parked out the front of one of the houses.  Then we had a visit from the water police, I think we will have lots of visits they are mostly curious about our Australian Flag.  We had a good chat with them, Craig had to go and put on his shorts first he was sitting in his jocks when they arrived.  They did check out our passports and paperwork for Adriana.  It was a joint US and Canadian patrol, they are combined in this part of the river, we were wondering how the two countries managed their borders in such busy waterways, this strategy has been in place for a few years now.  
More locks tomorrow so an early night for us.