Burlington Boathouse Marina, Burlington, VT - 6/17/12

Spending the night on the mooring ball was not bad at all.  Since our inverter is not inverting ... we had to run the generator more than we would have liked but we got through it.  This morning the wind was really blowing hard and most of the 30 or 40 boats in the mooring field didn't leave until late morning when the winds died down a little.  There were a lot of sail boats here and they were the first to leave since they seem to like wind.  A large majority of boats here are from our northern friend, Canada.

Energetic Kids

 These kids made several passes through our mooring field and didn't seem to mind the wind at all.

Beach

We had breakfast and waited on a vacancy at the marina.  Finally about noon we received our slip assignment so we left the mooring and stopped first for a pump out then on to our slip.  Since the wind was still pretty stiff, several dock hands met us at the slip to catch our ropes.  Tonight we are on a T-dock which meant we did not have to back into a slip beside another boat which was a blessing with the wind. This little beach area is right in front of our boat next to a walking path around the waterfront and a separate bike path.
 

Lost Ring

Mid afternoon we decided to venture out on the bus system and go to the University Mall several miles away.  Walking down the dock toward land we saw this young lady diving around a sail boat and thought she was trying to catch fish. Remember we are up north and the water temps today are in the high 50's!  Apparently she had lost a ring and was trying to find it on the bottom.  The water is so clear here that her mother was on the deck of the boat pointing to areas on the bottom to shiny things that might be her ring.
 

Church St. Marketplace Entertainer

We took the free bus to Marketplace then caught another to the Mall.  After purchasing a hard drive at Radio Shack to back up our computer, we stopped at the food court for a Big Mac which really tasted good.  Since we can only get PBS on our TV, I went to Applebee's while Ricki continued to shop for a while.to watch NASCAR. A quick trip to the grocery store next to the Mall and then we caught the next to last bus back to the marina.

We talked to all of our children today since hopefully we will get our GPS chip tomorrow and head for the border.  We have changed our Verizon to include a Canadian package so we will still have limited voice and text capabilities but they need to be held to a minimum to avoid big wireless bills.  To include our air card was out of sight so we will just hope for WiFi in marinas or coffee shops along the way which will probably limit the number of pictures we can post.

Apparently this wind issue is not the norm here but it is supposed to last until the front moves through later this week.  We are expecting 1 to 3 foot waves tomorrow on the lake which shouldn't be too bad and we only have a 4 hour run to Rouses Point.  We still haven't figured out why more loopers do not use this route since it is so pretty.