I bet you thought, that with all of this renovation talk lately, that we had forgotton all about boating life.  Well, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  We are still sailing fanatics, still in love with our dear R.E.D. and can’t wait until splash-time this coming spring.  I think what’s changed is that most of our winters have been spent taking courses and fulfilling obligations with our local boating squadron, but this year we’ve tried to keep our time more free.  Now, in complete retirement, we’ve started to re-evaluate how we see our future unfolding, thus all the renovation, selling, maybe even changing location talk.

We realize a lot of you who have been following along with us may not enjoy this little divergence and for that I hope we haven’t disappointed you.  It’s still our boating story.  There are still many boating adventures planned for the future.  There will still be boat modifications down the line.  But intermingled with those stories will be bits and pieces of what we need to do to get to that next phase.  All that being said we are pretty darned excited (and a little scared) about what’s coming next.

But today is all about boating and planning for R.E.D.’s Adventures 2017. We took a break from condo renos to visit the Montreal Boat Show.  There are very few boats of the sailing persuasion to drool over on display although there was a dreamy 30′ trawler at a bargain basement show price of $450,000 that we visited. Moving along…

By law we have to have paper charts for each cruising area onboard so for this year’s trip to Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, Port Severn-Trenton and Georgian Bay have been added to our cache.

Trip Charts

Also this year is Canada’s 150th birthday. Entry to Parks Canada Parks will be free.  It also includes free passage through all the many Parks Canada locks. We still have to pay mooring fees but this will be a huge savings for all boaters.  When visiting the Parks Canada booth at the show we were able to register our free lockage pass, free entry to all national parks and of course purchase our mooring package.  The very cool thing though is that usually if we tow a dinghy through the locks it requires paying not only for our R.E.D. but for our dinghy as well (priced per foot) but because of Canada’s birthday gift to boaters, Ballon de Rouge will be able to accompany us for free.  Little Ballon now has his own pass #Q50018. Yay!

Season Passes

So there you have it.  More to come as summer plans unfold but be prepared for a little reno talk from time to time.  Cheers and thanks for hanging in there with us.