July 1, 2010 Canada Day !

Sara -
Having slept in, I awoke to my dad's shuffling and my sister's singing. “Happy Canada Day,” I called drowsily from my bunk to delighted exclamations of “Oh yeah... Canada Day! Whoo! Canada Day!” from Steph, a Canada-obsessed, McGill-headed high school sophomore.
After a satisfying breakfast of crepes and an hour of waiting for Steph to finish showering, we motored out of the Collins Bay Marina, all those lovely Canadians we'd met there waving us off and Dad calling out our blog's address, while Steph and I waved smilingly, pajama-clad (to my fashionable sister's horror, that was my outfit for the day).

Once out of our sweet sanctuary, the wind decided to test Steph's Zen-ness (I've been trying to teach her not to freak out about things too much). Sadly, she succumbed, totally freaking out as the wind wrapped the sail's ropes around our bikes and, as she attempted to fix this, her white sweater was dirtied. “Da-a-ddy!” Her anguished cries reverberated around the boat. Dad frowned, offering help. I grumbled.
After Dad had cleaned Steph's sweater, she flounced off to do her makeup and we were allotted a moment's peace. We took turns steering the boat and adjusting the sails, but Dad did most of the work as I chomped on the best gum in the world (peppermint Orbit), reading On The Road by the brilliant Jack Kerouac whose style reminds me of my beloved J.D. Salinger's.
Assured that her sweater was no longer in danger, Steph joined us in the cockpit with a repentant smile, and snuggled in a corner with a blanket, Pringles, and her iTouch on which she watched that new Sherlock Holmes movie. Dad steered, relaxing into routine. I read, annoyedly ignoring my newly and, I was afraid, fleetingly-sane sister. As I focused my attention back onto Kerouac's masterpiece of a novel, I quickly forgot all about Steph and her sweater, and forgetting, forgave (if accidentally).

Deseronto, a quaint nowheres-ville (as my mom calls all sparsely populated places), was celebrating Canada Day as we motor-sailed in and anchored near a moon-bounce surrounded by balloon-carrying parents and cake-eating kids ( we later learned that the cake was free, so after consuming a delicious dinner of poutine, we got some too). Tired and too lazy to walk to town, we took the dinghy back to our boat where we were soon joined by our friends Jay and Joan who have been traveling with us on a catamaran with their three fantastically enthusiastic chocolate labs, Molly, Marley, and Rosie. Their whipped cream and our brownies made for a delectable dessert. Bellies contented, Steph and I proceeded to jump off the boat (with trepidation at first but then with great gusto). As we first started doing a couple summers ago in idyllic Lake Champlain, we shampooed each others hair and attempted not to drop the soap into the dreaded sea monsters' lair (Steph kept going on half-jokingly about how horrible monsters were slumbering beneath us and would get exceedingly angry if we let anything sink down to them). Splashing and screaming and laughing hysterically about sea monsters, we stayed in that surprisingly warm-ish water for about an hour. Later, as Steph and I were playing UNO, Dad called us up to watch the fireworks which, to our amazement (as we didn't think such a small town could afford such a spectacle), were breathtakingly brilliant bursts of glittering color, their dying embers floating off like fireflies.