Orwell, VT, to Port Henry, NY. Big afternoon blow.

Today rhymed with yesterday, and the two days before. We had a multi-hour window of clear weather in the morning, with bad weather expected in the afternoon. We left Chipman Point Marina at 8:00 AM and headed north, with a light to moderate southerly wind and soon came upon Fort Ticonderoga on the New York side of the lake. Originally called Fort Carillon when the French built it in 1755, the fort was strategically important due to its location on Lake Champlain and its proximity to a portage to Lake George. In 1759, it was captured by the British and renamed Ticonderoga, which is Iroquois for “junction of two waters.” Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold took the fort from a small British garrison in 1775, who were unaware that the Revolutionary War had begun a few weeks earlier. In 1776, Fort Ticonderoga’s artillery was relocated and proved vital in breaking the British siege of Boston.

It was mostly a pretty tame travel day, covering 19 more miles in three hours to Port Henry, NY. As we passed the Champlain Lighthouse and turned the last corner towards our marina, we saw a large rain squall headed our way. We didn’t want to accelerate and speed into an unfamiliar harbor, so we took our lumps, got soaked and tied up in the rain. At least the nice dockhands from Bridgeview Harbour Marina met us to assist. It rained on and off and the wind blew hard all afternoon, as expected. What wasn’t expected was how poorly protected the marina is from the waves that built up from the steady 15-20 mph winds, and Dragonfly tossed and turned on the floating dock, along with every other boat in the harbor. I’m actually writing this from the laundry room, since it was difficult to type on the rolly boat. We did get a break in the rain and grabbed lunch at the onsite Dockside Cafe. In case you’re wondering, we keep rolling the dice on the weather to get closer to Burlington, VT, where we have plane reservations for Saturday the 29th to fly home for Danielle and Jay’s wedding. 

The rain finally quit at 6:00 PM, and we practically ran off of the boat to explore the Village of Port Henry in the Town of Moriah. Once a prosperous iron ore mining and processing center, it’s now another small waterfront community that appears to be struggling. The attractive town hall in the pic below was once the 1875 office building for the iron ore company. 

We ate dinner at the town’s only open restaurant, Gene’s, a roadside fast-food joint with a Dairy Queen menu. When we returned to Dragonfly, we found that one of the marina’s mooring cleats had broken loose from the dock, and our boat was kittywampus in the slip, with the stern untethered, the bow angled in, our anchor hitting the shore-power pedestal and our dockside electrical cable loose and in the water. Fortunately, nothing was damaged, and all was restored after a little hectic effort. The wind finally died down, but as the sun set at 8:40 PM, we’re still rolling, although nowhere near as much as this afternoon. Map Link: Port Henry, NY