The Captain's Logs are below.

Read the Crew's Views from John, KC, and Caroline as they reflect on their experiences in Asia.

Back to 1999 Captain Logs Index

We departed Erie the very next morning and had to steam against a fresh easterly to make Port Colburne on the Canadian side.

Port Colburne is where we pick up the Welland Canal that channels ships around Niagara Falls and into Lake Ontario. Stan-the-Man Fowler rejoined us at Erie for the trip to New London, Connecticut. Stan sailed with us last year from the West Coast of Mexico to Baltimore, and also assisted us with last winter's maintenance projects.

We had four other guest crew for this leg, all of whom pulled their weight by helping with line handling while transiting the locks of the Welland Canal.

The canal is known as the world's highest staircase (it's #5 on the map above). It consists of eight locks, each with a 46 foot drop, and passes through the farmlands of Ontario. It is all gravity fed and very efficient, though some of the installations are looking a bit tired and overgrown in places. We entered the first lock at 1900 hours and came out the other side into Lake Ontario at 0100 the next morning.

With the canal behind us and only 25 miles to go to Toronto, I decided to lay alongside the tie-up quay to catch our breath and grab a couple of zzzzs. The night was perfectly calm. The schooner lay quietly to her lines. A meadow full of crickets chirped their song of August while across the canal two old buddies sat beneath a light with a cooler of beer between them, their legs dangling over the edge of the pier, most likely talking of high school.

With dawn we sailed north to Toronto with a fair easterly breeze on the starboard beam. Upon approaching the city, the rest of the crew was roused and more sail was piled on. We came through the eastern channel under all sail, less a few kites, and ran down the waterfront with the breeze astern. Conditions were ideal for an arrival under sail and Toronto harbor is broad enough for easy maneuvering. The cannon reports banked off the glass walls of skyscraper canyons and rippled through the city. After two very gray days, we saw blue sky and sunshine again.

Toronto has been a fun port-of-call. The weather has been fine and the people here demonstrate a determination to squeeze every bit of juice from their summer months, much like one sees in Scandinavia. Whereas in other ports the crew often had friends and family with whom they immediately became engaged, Toronto is relatively unfamiliar territory. In consequence, the sense of discovery, so important to sailors, is more pronounced. Toronto is home to a number of my own former shipmates, which led to much rejoicing.

Two of the lads, Mark Renchko and Ian Robertson, both marine engineers, took it upon themselves to refurbish the bores of Pride II's two swivel guns. Because the guns sit on the rail with the muzzles pointing upward, water had collected in the bores over the years causing scale to build up so that they no longer fired. Natural-born engineers love nothing more than a problem to solve. It helps to satiate their prodigious sense of indispensability. In addition, these two have a particular fondness for cannons. To this end, the cannons were transported to the shop at the fireboat station where Ian and Mark work. Here, they fashioned various implements for clearing the bores and touch-holes of scale. The next day, the guns were back on the rail and the jolly lads had the satisfaction of successfully test firing them out on Toronto Harbor.

Today we sail. With the wind easterly, it looks like the iron topsail will be employed. We are homeward bound. Though today is warm and a pleasant summer's haze lays upon the harbor, autumn will soon be nipping at our heels. A veritable mountain of rock salt is already heaped up on the commercial wharf in preparation for winter, and hurricane season has begun down south. The autumn gales are not far behind. We dare not tarry.

Watch Below,
Captain Parrott