My brother gave us a ride over, and by 8:15 we were aboard. After a quick "pre-flight" check, we put the clutch in neutral, gave it 1/4 throttle, 5 seconds of glow plug, (as recommended by the PO) and hit the starter. The old French rattler clattered to life with a considerable cloud of carbon smoke. (I've already scheduled an injector rebuild/calibration at my diesel shop
)After a bit of time for warm up, it cleaned up nicely, and we let go lines and headed out into the fairway. Trying to familiarize myself with the new electronics package, I was immediately surprised to see that the Garmin charts gave no information at all on the route we intended to take, the narrow Bateau Channel north of Howe Island, wonder why? I was very happy that we had brought our St Lawrence River chart book as well. We have been this route before, but not in many years.
As we headed NE along the channel we were amused to see a local school bus heading to the mainland on the cable ferry -- interesting bus ride for those lucky kids! The engine ran great, if a little loud, and we pottled along nicely at 1800 RPM doing about 7.2 kts over ground. Current with us here, but probably not very strong in this backwater. After a time we made the turn north at the end of Howe, slipped through the narrow channel at the Spectacles Shoal and cruised past Gananague. Then across an open reach to the needles eye of Gananaque Narrows.
From there on we were into what we consider our home waters, channels we know and have traveled for years. In due time we entered the strong currents just upstream of the Canadian Span of the Thousand Islands Bridge. Amusing to watch the GPS show up to 8.7 kts as the swirling water carried us into one of the most beautiful parts of this river.
Under the high span, into the wide Canadian Channel past Rockport, then into US waters to Alex Bay for our arranged meeting with the CBP Officer to clear us in. We raised the yellow quarantine flag and headed for the dock. After that, and a quick lunch to celebrate, it was back into the boat for the remaining 5 miles downstream to Pine Bay, our home port.
So, we've made our first passage in the Albin 27FC, and it was a good one. We like it very much, but have a few things we want to attend to before next year, and some changes to make. We want to install a "Natures Head" -- we have one in our camper and love it. When we take out the holding tank, I plan to replace it with a "day" or running fuel tank, probably of 20 gallons or so. The number one priority though will be sound proofing. My I-phone meter showed 83db at the helm at cruising speed -- way too loud for us.
We have already been helped by many here, as we have studied the achieved posts and they have been invaluable to us. I hope as time goes by we can add some helpful posts of our own to the collection.
Tom
