Valcour Island, NY

The morning of Sunday, June 24 started with Mike Goldfield arriving early bringing special bagels and cream cheese from a popular Montréal baker. Jonny set out a plate of lox and sliced cucumbers and we had ourselves a nice breakfast onboard Zendo.  Mike kindly invited us to his home in Dorset, VT and stay the night, but we thought it best to continue our journey up the lake to Canada.

After saying our goodbyes to Michael, we got ready to leave Burlington, but first we had to stop for fuel and the all important pump-out.  By noon we cruised around the Burlington breakwater passing some rowers in dragonboats and headed north.  

Our destinations are much closer here on Lake Champlain and it only took us two hours to reach Valcour Island.  The cruise was a smooth one with very calm waters but it was a bit chilly!  

We looked at a variety of anchorages but because the wind was coming from the north, we wanted to find one that would provide protection from that direction.  We found what we thought would be a perfect one at Bluff Point South on the southwest shore of Valcour Island.  It was next to a park with dinghy access and lots of good hiking trails.  There were several sailboats already anchored inthe bay and rather than be crowded among them, we found a lovely spot a bit further up and closer to shore.  Since it was misting on and off, we did not take the dinghy to explore the enticing parkland and instead stayed cozy inside and read and worked on the Burlington blog entry (a long one).

After our usual cocktail and nibbles (still enjoying the salami and cheese from the Italian market in Philly), Jonny made a delicious dinner of leftover rotisserie chicken and the wonderful vegetables we got from the farmer’market in Burlington.  We decided to watch one of the movies that Andy had lent us.  In the meantime, all that afternoon and during dinner, more and more sailboats arrived to anchor (at least 25 that we could count).  

We were glad we had anchored further away from the madding crowd.  

However, as it started to get darker it seemed as if we were closer to shore than we felt comfortable with.  Jonny kept peering at the very rocky shoreline and checking our anchor line.  The wind was picking up and although we weren’t dragging, we were concerned that if we did drag being so close to shore would give us insufficient time to react and correct the situation.  So we both put on our heavy raincoats and pulled up anchor to move Zendo out of that part of the cove and further away from the shoreline.  We found a safer spot behind two sailboats in 35 feet of water (a lot for us as we usually seek between 8 and 15 feet of water to anchor in).  We felt much more comfortable in this spot.  By this time it was getting late so we skipped the movie and called it a night and slept much better than if we stayed in our first location!

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