June 24 – The last few days have been a whirlwind! We woke up Dylan at 12:30 AM on Thursday morning and shuffled him into the car to do our seven-hour drive from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay. That got us to Thunder Bay Yacht Club the same morning Starship arrived. Our new friend, Scott from St. Andrew’s Trucking Ltd., did a great job getting Starship safely here!

Using the travel lift, we launched and Jason and Dylan did a great job maneuvering her into our slip while myself and Richard, the yacht club manager, caught the docking lines. We were so excited to finally be floating!

There are many jobs to do now to get things set up but getting the mast ready to lift and put up is the next biggest task. We are getting there but it looks like we will not be ready to lift the mast until we are back here the beginning of July.

We have enjoyed meeting and getting to know some of the members here at the club, many who have been sailing Lake Superior for years. We are quickly learning about sailing this lake and look forward to more conversations about recommended routes and anchorages for when we make our way across to Sault Saint Marie. We were interested to learn that night sailing gets very cold even in the middle of summer so that is helpful information. Also, it sounds like we might get lucky with salmon fishing at some point this summer! That would be amazing as one of our favourite suppers is cedar planked, maple and lemon BBQ’d salmon!

With all the work we have done on the boat recently, there were many things that could’ve caused problems with launch but we are delighted that all went so smoothly! We also got more amazing news – our oldest son, Alex, should be joining us much earlier than planned this summer! It looks like he may be here in Thunder Bay to hop onboard as early as July 12 so that means he will be with us when we do our first push of the dock for The Big Trip! He plans to sail with us for about two weeks so he will be with us for the trip from here to Sault Saint Marie!

Since we got to Thunder Bay we have been sleeping in an Airbnb while we got the inside of the boat set up. We happily have moved aboard and are about to settle into our first night as a livaboard family! Monday morning we drive back to Winnipeg to tie up loose ends and say some tough goodbyes but until then we are enjoying finally being in our home on the water!