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August 20, 2007 Post 16

Oak Orchard Festival and Bay of Quinte

Our first day, pointing towards Rochester

On August 9 Sara B with Chris, Sue and Toby Gateley and Dan Wing aboard set out for the Oak Orchard Wooden Boat fest some eighty miles away. After a few hours a helpful northeaster came up and soon she was loafing along on an easy reach. The wind went easterly and held all the way to Rochester. As flat gray clouds crept in from the south the seas built to occasional five footers on the quarter. Sara B remained unfazed by the sea state, but her crew complained of the smell from the sewage plant upwind as they entered the Genesee.

The old schooner spent a rainy night at a dock at Shumway Marine rolling gently to the river's surge before continuing on to Point Breeze and the boat fest the next day. The weekend then provided blue skies and ideal weather for the event. This year the festival attracted Three Schooners, Sara B, the 35 foot Liberty, and a Tancook Whaler, Marinna - 31 on deck. Marinna had sailed down from Hamilton with Doug and Lois Collins so she imparted an international flavor to the gathering.

Some of the small motorboats at the festival

The boat fest again featured its parade with Jake Allen the teenaged bagpiper aboard Sara B bringing up the rear. And of the three eligible sailboats at the show, Sara B was narrowly voted best sailboat by the exhibitors with Marinna receiving this year's farthest traveled award.

Monday Sara B reached over to Presquile at times tearing the waves wide open as she foamed along at a great rate. After a slow upwind plod against the brisk offshore she made it into the bay and spent a very bouncy night on the dock. The next day she motored through the Murray canal and ran down to Belleville to anchor in the very popular cove just east of the city.

The Bay of Quinte treated the old schooner well, giving her fair winds for the whole sixty miles except for plugging into Picton where she spent a day at a dock watching the traffic come and go. Then another grand broad reach sent her up the Adolphus Reach to Prinyers and a night tucked in on a mooring with a strong cold front and T storms.

The fire boat shows its stuff through Marinna's rigging

But the front slipped past and the next morning on a clear sunlit late summer day she again reached across the lake with a fine ten to twenty westerly back to Fair Haven. This cruise gave us some of the best Bay of Quinte sailing I've ever had and we were well pleased with our old boat. Given a reach she steps along and when the waves start piling up she negotiates them with an easy sure footed deliberation that her crew finds reassuring. We left her back at her dock and drove home well satisfied with her performance. I for one, felt more than compensated for all those hours under her bottom last spring in the boat yard. Now as the swallows and monarchs depart and lake levels recede Sara B settles in for the remainder of her third season with us.