Wake with the Sun: August 2015

Saturday, August 29, 2015

En Route to Butler Island from City Bay, North Hero

This morning, Claude stopped at the store via pedal kayak to pick up a few groceries. Apparently the whole town knows about our boat now.

We have left City Bay in North Hero and are en route to Butler Island via Knight Island, where there is a state park. We will hang at Knight for breakfast while we refuel the boat (that is, anchor in the sunshine). It does not cease to amaze me that every day we move around this lake, solely by solar power and our little electric motor that "can".

As we are winding down our trip, we have some ideas of what is coming next, but we are still unplanned. We are at Butler today, and probably overnight, and then might head up the inland see to the Alburg Passage from the north. Just an idea.

Here are more photos for you. Nice ones of the sunrise in City Bay and the house.

Underway Toward Knight Island

Friday, August 28, 2015

City Bay, North Hero, One More Night

Tonight we find ourselves on anchor again in City Bay North Hero. Just after we set anchor, our friends, John and Bob stopped by in their boat, en route to Butler Island for the weekend. So, that is nice, we will get to see them again tomorrow. This afternoon we biked all over N. Hero (the southern part) trying to avoid Route 2, and sticking to small roads. We stopped at the N. Hero Marina, and took a couple of photos.

Before heading out on the bikes, we dropped them off with the boat at the Hero's Welcome Marina. They used to sell gas at the end of the dock, so they asked us to park our boat there. Ironic of course, since our boat does not use gas. We were only stopping to offload the bikes, but once we arrived at dock, we had small crowds of folks asking us about the boat. If you were there, thanks for visiting the blog here. And thank you all for visiting the blog. Here are some more photos for you.

Gas Dock

Hero's Welcome General Store

N. Hero Marina

Moonrise over Wake with the Sun

Anchor Light

North Hero, City Bay

Here you can see some photos from Burton Island as we left, and then our passage by Knight Island, en route to City Bay in North Hero. The passage was calm, or dable winds for the most part. When we arrived on dock in N. Hero at the Hero House, with hopes of checking out the place, we were greeted by many folks wanting to learn about Wake with the Sun, and how we go about living our nomad life off the grid, powered by the sun every day. We spoke with folks for almost an hour before we finally stepped on dock and headed out to tech out the inn. We had hoped to potentially take a room and keep our boat on dock there overnight, but after they told us it would be OK. we were later told that we would not be permitted to keep the boat on their dock for liability reasons, That made sense, as the dock was very rickety, but when we were eating a bite at their lakeside bar, we saw a larger boat than ours pull up and dock, and the bar welcomed them, and even took their trash for them. Later, the head manager at N.Hero House said that oh, it was OK to dock for an hour or so for a meal. I had the sense that the owner of NHH just didn't want our attention-getting solar house on his dock. That was fine with us, though, as we went out on anchor and, after at nice dinner at NHH, we slept very well in the calm bay. It would be nice to doc temporarily, so hopefully we can. Otherwise, the water seems clean here and folks are very interested in the boat. When we arrived for dinner to the dock via our dingy (our pedal kayak), there was a crowd of maybe 8 adults waiting to talk to us about the boat. We cave them cards for this blog, but had to run off to try to catch the general store before it was supposed to close. As it turns out, it was closed. We will try the store today. Folks say the store is unusual, and worth visiting. It's called Hero's Welcome. They also have a marina, and said we could dock there temporarily, and will try that later today.

All for now.

Here are some photos. Enjoy.