On the way up the river Mark, Debra, and Stephanie took Fitz to Chateau Montebello which is a Fairmount managed resort. Reported as the world’s largest log cabin. It is a destination for holidayers by road or boat. They have an extensive marina. In Currie mind, it seems strange to pay $100K for a boat that you then pay $2,000 a month in upkeep so that you can pilot it to a hotel to pay $400 a night for a hotel room plus likely $100 in overnight moorage fees. Oh yes, and the fuel to drive there in a boat. Just for context, today Mark spent $981 on diesel (the tanks were far from empty as we carry almost 1,800 liters).  We had to line up behind other boats at the fuel dock to even do that.  Back to the Montebello, the shore party reported impressive grounds and the building is well kept with a huge centre fireplace, as designed in the 1930s.

Stephanie found these articles that say it was built in 4 months with 3,500 with 1,200 railcars of logs.

Still, aboard Cherish and waiting in the river, Pat and Currie fought the riverbed for a place where the anchor would find grip on the bottom. We determined that our massive anchor and 80′ of heavy chain slowed our drift by 50% or so. That is if we would have just floated downstream our progress would have only be twice as fast as the two times we tried to set the anchor.  There is no one anchor for any type of sea bottom. This anchor seemed to only effectively rototill the river bottom, not grip it.  After Pat and Currie cleaned the anchor and chain off from all the horticultural artifacts from the river bottom and the other returned we made our way to Petrie Island.

Going up the river we encountered a crazy ferry maze. There were 3 ferries constantly cross. We have big engines and barely made it through. I don’t know how a sailboat, with their slow speeds, would ever have made it through. Pat got us through with liberal use of the 740hp. 

Boats as yard art. We saw house were all the garden beds were canoes so yes boat as yard art is the new black.

We saw this very, very expensive boat going towards Ottawa burning 150 or so liters of diesel every hour to go this speed. For a large boat (50+) it ran very flat on the water and had the largest spray off the nose. You can see it in the picture. It creates its own waterfall off each bow.  Little did we know that we would be parked right beside it on the canal all in Ottawa 2 days later.

At Petrie Island, there was a major party/parties going on at the public beach.  It was sunny and warm with a great time being had by all on the beach. Pat and Mark arranging the anchoring.

Ten minutes late the lifeguards issued the clear the beach warning and a big summer storm began. The public beach at Petrie Island where we anchored 100 meters off. The photo on the left is the view from the concert seats of Cherish looking towards the beach. View from the Sky Lounge of Cherish looking aft about 6 am the following day.

The evening ended peacefully as we were ready for an early start to Ottawa.  Sunset and sunrise pictures from Petrie Island.

Curre took this at 5 am there were people commuting into Ottawa. Sorry commuter gang.

Courtesy of Bing Maps