After Belle Isle - Life Off Into The Blue

With Into The Blue safely at the dock in Belle Isle Marina, we traveled south to Florida, our original destination, and time with family. The journey was an interesting one, the first time we had traveled by Greyhound and a learning experience all in itself. Many different kinds of people travel on the bus, and the one thing they have in common is the desire to get to where they are going without spending too much money. Young and old, people going to jobs, leaving lost jobs, returning to family, just going somewhere else, dressed up and dressed down, all traveling together for hours more or less comfortably. There were conversations, jokes, part of a movie shared until someone's laptop ran out of battery. There was the bus driver with the beautifully manicured nails holding conversations on her handsfree phone; the one who had to stop at McDonald's to grab dinner; the new driver wanting to show his authority. There was the time the bus went on to the rumble strips by the highway and every dozing passenger woke up to call out to the bus driver, voices coming from every part of the bus. We arrived at our destination tired, grubby and happy to have made it.

Mid-January saw us driving up from Miami, Florida to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Not quite the way we had planned to return, a road trip in a car not quite ready for winter driving, but we made it safely. Friends to stay with, along the way and when we got to Halifax, and work to go back to, eased our return and made it possible to start planning how to bring Into The Blue back to Halifax as well. We had a little time, a couple of months of snow and cold to plan and gather what we needed before the weather would be warm enough to bring the boat back. Timing revolved around the need to move her from the marina during April and making sure we had the resources we needed.

This meant spending a part of winter in Halifax. So what does a boater do in the winter, when they are far away from the boat they usually live on? They go to the nearest boat show, of course. One of the pleasures of going to a boat show is coming across interesting new things you have not seen before. The Halifax Boat Show may not be huge, but it does have its share of thing that catch the eye.

The first thing we noticed was an anchor recovery system called Anchor Rescue. Every cruiser who’s spent much time on the hook knows that awful moment when the bow of the boat dips and the anchor that should be coming up nicely refuses to budge. This is most likely to happen in the kind of water you have no desire to dive into, or when the anchor is at a depth beyond the range of your lungs.

AnchorRescue is the kind of system we wished we had had, would like to have, in exactly those kinds of circumstances. It has two very appealing features. First it is very simple - part of the system is on your anchor and ready when you need it, the other part is easily stored and lowered down the anchor rode only when needed - and the whole thing has been designed to be easy to use.

A slider around the anchor chain is tethered to the crown of the anchor, and the chain that tethers it held out of the way with wraps. When you need to pull on the crown of your anchor to release to release it, you simply slide the weighted retriever down down your anchor chain until it engages with the slider and pull. The slider moves up the anchor chain, breaking the ties that hold the tether out of the way, pulls on the crown - and voila, you’re lifting the head of the anchor away from whatever is obstructing it. Neat. They have a web site where you can learn more, if you’re interested.

The next thing to catch our eye was a fibreglass, semi-translucent propane tank, sitting on display in Capt. Shrink’s booth. We don’t have propane on board, hope not to - but we were curious. Seems the price is midway between those for steel and aluminum cylinders. Most attractive features? No more corrosion worries, very long-lasting and you can see the level of propane inside the tank. Another product we found interesting, if rather pricey for our budget, is the Torqueedo folding electric outboard with an integrated battery. It looks very easy to use - you can simply stick it on the back of your dinghy or small boat and not have to worry about carrying/storing a separate battery or dealing with connections.

Then there were products we had seen before but took time to take a look at again, like the Webasto heaters - definitely a step up from our present fireplace, and something we are seriously considering in these cold waters. And the Klepper folding kayaks from Germany, beautifully and ruggedly designed. If only we could think of a good reason we needed one. Then we stopped to look at and ask questions about the inboard diesels on display - the boat show being a great place to compare and contrast and ask questions.


The bad part? The show reminded us there’s more than one reason they say a boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money...