Sampling in St. Catharines
At 9:00 - we left the Bambu Pier for Port Dalhousie to meet with Lynda Lukasik, Jennifer Jamison and Scott for meetings and some sampling in the area. On board with me were Charla Jones from the Star and Eric Mattson - helping me out again.
We headed 180 South - which seemed rather odd from the Toronto harbour as we appeared to be heading directly out into the middle of the Lake. In fact - I instinctually kept leaning a little right for the first half hour such that we were pushed to much to the West and had to turn East for the last half of the trip.
A quarter of the way out - many fishing boats were in the area and it was clear - the fishing grounds were quite good out here. Toronto behind us appeared quite ugly - covered in a yellowish/brown haze - stretching all along the shore from Hamilton to Oshawa. At around 3/4 of the way across - we lost site of the CN Tower.
The boat ran at around 33 rpms most of the way -using half a tank of gas.
When we arrived - we went up the little river - and docked in the Port transient docks. Met Lynda and Jenn and Scott. Charla, Jenn and Scott went sampling. Eric stayed behind and watched the boat while Lynda and I went off to meeting for the next couple hours.
The beach was open to the West of the river outlet - although our understanding had been that it was closed most of the week. At least we thought it must have been open as 10s of people were swimming with many more lying around the beach. There were however no signs indicating whether the vbeach water was safe or not. This seemed quite odd -m as everywhere else we went on the Lake to beaches - clear signs regarding the safety of the water were clearly visible.
We left the Port around 2:O0 - for Toronto. As it was a very hot day - 90C we wanted to go swimming but decided to wait until we got out into the middle of the Lake.
The water was still very calm - as it had been all day. Hardly any wake at all. We stopped a half hour out of Port and went swimming in some of the nicest, cleanest and most incredible water anywhere in the world. The depth at our swimming hole - was 346 feet and schools of fish were noted swimming near our boat. The water at the top 10 feet was very warm. It was great to float along with the boat, swimming and floating in the sun.
If only the citizens of Toronto, Hamilton or anywhere else in the western end of the Lake could see what could be on their very own shores- I think the millions who live in this golden horseshoe might change their opinion about how Lake Ontario is dirty, unuseable and can't be saved.
We went back to Toronto - smooth all the way.
Ten minutes after we arrived - and I went up to our office - the power went out. As I was talking to Krystyn in Scarborough - when my computer and her computer went down at the same time - I knew it was a big one. The phone rang - and Jenn told us Stoney Creek went down.
It was a big one.
Mark