August 28, 2003
Lake Ontario

The weather changes all the time here on the lake. Everyday is very different from the one before. Sometimes is a smooth sailing, sometimes is tossing cookies overboard like we did this night, but let's not get ahead ourselves here...

From the doghouse of a port Darlington we left early, at the sunrise, hoping to reach Prequille Point before the night. From the start we had Easterly winds which forced us to beat against the wind at some point which it became no wind at all.

Becalmed west of Cobourg somewhere around Bonville we have decided to toss an anchor for the night to avoid extensive motoring and, yeah to save few bucks as well. If we only knew...

What started as a windless afternoon soon became a very difficult night for us. Wind started to blow from the East again but all waves were coming from the South which resulted in a very uncomfortable boat motion. By midnight waves were over 1 meter high and coming from the beam of the boat tossed us around the cabin like a couple of kittens in a bag. Sleeping was out of the question. Things were falling all around us and we had to hang on to something to no fell of our beds.

In my mind I was trying to go to my happy place and ignore the motion which was making us dog-like-sick, however after realizing that my strobe light I had raised in place of my anchor light went dead I had to fix my mast top light. Working on the wires in the boat while being tossed around didn't go to well and I joined Johannes in the cockpit where he was struggling to keep his dinner from coming up to say hello.

After a short while we both were sick like small town drunks and Johannes did the honors and send his food to the fishes. I was happy to hold it together until I had a brilliant idea to use our scopolamine patches - for sea sickness, you know. When I went down below one time too many my body flipped a switch 'abort' first I had to drop my pants so I didn't soil myself. After I did that I felt a little bit better. For about two minutes. My food didn't even make to the lake. My boat never was decorated like this before.

We were weakened beyond belief unable to do anything except to hang on. At this point boat was taking care of us. Thank God for the good anchor. In the morning totally exhausted we found ourselves dozing off with rain gear and rubber boots still on. Johannes labeled this night "a night from the pits of hell" and none of us never was so sick before. Ever. The feeling of sickness didn't leave us until the end of the next day. (M)