Tom and Veronica Friesen of Windsor, Ontario, went sailing on a history cruise of the York River with his brother Larry and wife Susan, where they regaled us with their participation in the bicentennial of the Battle of 1813 on Lake Erie.
“It was a huge rendezvous of tall ships and battleships of the period, completely reenacted down to the minute the battle started at 10 am. Hundreds of pleasure boats showed up to watch, and the Coast Guard had to intervene because they were in the line of battle. ‘GET OUT OF THE WAY!’ the Coast Guard boomed with a megaphone. ‘THE SHIPS WILL NOT TURN TO AVOID YOU.’ It was awesome.”
Earlier in the day we got some boating advice from another crew member. When Rhonda McGlothlin bought a motorboat from a fellow at Smith Mountain Lake near Roanoke, “He drove me around on the water and then said, ‘I have one piece of advice. Don’t approach a dock any faster than you’d like to hit it.’” The lake has more than 500 miles of coastland crossing into three counties—Rockingham, Bedford and Franklin. “They banned cigarette boats because the homeowner association thought them too loud.”
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