Summer 2017 on Suzie Q

This year we launched on June 8. We took our time getting her ready because the harbour gates were still in and it looked like the water level would take a while to go down. Finally the gates came out on June 12. I went to watch how it was done because in all the years I've been a member at the Britannia Yacht Club, I'd never witnessed that.

The panels come out one at a time so that the flow coming in is not too strong.

But before all that, I must mention that the club and a lot of houses and areas along the Ottawa River were flooded in the spring. Bigger flood than anyone can remember. On May 7th, Dave and I went to help fill sandbags at BYC for a few hours. There were over 100 volunteers that helped during the weekend in order to keep the water out of the club and surrounding land. The building was flooded but thanks to big pumps and dryers the damage was kept under control.

This year we did not need to do much to the boat except the regular cleaning and painting of the bottom. As Dave applied the VC17 (rust colour) on the bottom, he ran out of paint. So instead of VC17, the keel was painted with black Tremclad. Maybe we have started a trend... We are not sure what it will look like when we haul out!

For a number of reasons, including the weather, we only sailed on Suzie Q seven times this summer. But each time was a beautiful day with nice manageable winds.

On Canada Day we entertained our friends Alan and Mary and Alan's relatives. Alan gave us a huge flag that Dave promptly hoisted and that I took down in the middle of the night as the wind picked up and the flag made a lot of noise. Yes we slept on the boat that night!

July 15th

To finish the sailing season, there was a freak storm on September 27th that did a lot of damage at BYC. Trees were down, boats were damaged in the harbour, one boat was blown off its cradle, others off their trailers, etc. Thankfully Suzie Q did not sustain any damage but she was pretty dirty.

We hauled out on October 6th. That seemed a bit early this year as we had a beautiful month of October. But now the cold is here... time to go to Florida!

The Tremclad did a pretty good job!