Niagara Wines

After another night of anchor dragging in a too shallow, hole in the wall harbor, I weighed (raised) anchor only to find we had an ample harvest of bottom grasses. These made a nice Neptune's beard for Whisper, but fairly broke my back as I wrestled the anchor aboard.

The day was warm, the wind was light and the seas were down. We reached off across Lake Erie toward Port Colborne, Ontario and the entrance the the Welland Canal.

The Welland Canal was built to take ships up and down the Niagara Escarpment, the major elevation change between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and the geological formation responsible for the falls of storied romance and tourist kitsch.

Mid-Lake Erie Whisper encountered a pair of landing craft. My first thought was 'the Canadians are invading! Quick, lock up our healthcares system!' Then I realized these strange were American flagged, the Army Corps of Engineers off to divert yet another waterway.

Needing a "lay" day for rest and resupply, I decided to check out the region's wineries. Like many, I had held on to the stigma attached to wines of upstate New York, made a generation ago from Concord grapes. That notion was quicklly dispelled. The Niagara region is justly famous for its world class wines.

Another thing this region is famous for, aside from honeymoon hotels and wedding chapels, is its fruits and vegetables. After the dearth of fresh produce experienced of late, Whisper's skipper fairly gorged himself on heirloom tomatoes and corn and peaches and plums and pears and and and and......... Perhaps U.S. Customs will forgive me for contraband fruit. Or maybe I'll just stay out in the lake eating myself into a happy stupor before embarking stateside.

By week's end Whisper will have transited Lake Ontario and THEN THE BIG DECISION!!! Do we take the northern route out the St. Lawrence Seaway as originally planned? Or do we take the southern route via the Oswego River into the Erie Canal and the Hudson River.

As the season is getting late and personal business needs tending to, I'm favoring the southern route. A fall cruise down the New England coast to Maine sounds far more pleasant than bashing our way across the Gulf of the St. Lawrence in October gales. Is it the cowards way out or merely common sense? Then again, it's an awful lot of river travel with the mast down and underpowered.