Monday, June 25, 2012

The southern end of Lake Champlain

The new Champlain bridge

Le Bistro du Lac at Yacht Club

We left Whitehall Marina at 9:30 a.m. Whitehall is at the bottom of Lake Champlain where it looks more like a river than a lake. We really felt like we were back in Vermont as the clouds came in and it began to sprinkle rain. We almost never have misty, light rain in Florida. When it rains in Florida, it really rains, but then the sun comes out. We put on our rain gear and stayed outside for the ride to Westport, NY. The lake veers to the west just before the new Champlain bridge completed last year. After the bridge, we turned north and put away the chart plotter for the final 10 miles or so to Westport. From now on, there is plenty of water from shore to shore except for a few shoal areas that we are familiar with. I found myself continuing to watch the depth even though I knew we had plenty of water. That is habit that will be hard to break after touching bottom a number of times over the course of our trip. We arrived in Westport at 2:30 p.m. and were soon welcomed by another rain shower. The rain let up later in the afternoon and we spoke with our friend Jeff who lives on the lake in South Hero. He decided to meet us by boat at the marina. It is about 40 miles, but it took him only an hour and fifteen minutes. It takes us nearly five hours to travel that far. He arrived with a bottle of champagne -very nice- and his neighbor, Fred. There is a French restaurant on the water not far from the marina, so Jeff ferried us to the restaurant. Tomorrow we complete the final leg of our trip that has taken us over 2,000 miles. The trip will have taken 51 days and 230 hours on the engine. We will have burned 2 gallons of fuel per hour at 4 miles per gallon. Tomorrow, we will complete the trip when we arrive at the Burlington Boat House in downtown Burlington. We are looking forward to being back on land again and we are feeling a great sense of accomplishment.