All of our titles are on sail at www.chimneybluffs.com or at independent bookstores and gift shops between Toronto and Oswego including

Rivers End Books,Oswego, Nautical Mind Toronto, Yesterday's Muse Webster, Village Book Mart Palmyra, and Yankee Peddler Books Rochester. Or you can contact the author via e mail!

Curl up with a friend and a good book!

Coming Soon Maritime Tales of Lake Ontario from the History Press available later this month from www.chimneybluff.com or at a book store near you.

Our Latest Publication- Twinkle Toes and the Riddle of the Lake

find 2 excerpts at the Log On Line and a short synopsis at this link http://www.silverwaters.com/Riddleshow/index.html

Ariadne’s Death Heroism And Tragedy On Lake Ontario  see below

 Edge Walker's Lake Shore Birding Hot Spots new 24 page pamphlet available July 07 $3.50 see link for an excerptC:\Intrepid\swweb\hotspot

Sailing On A Shoe String and Boating On A Budget Find more  about these  short e-books available for download at www.chimneybluff.com (under books lake ontario or gateley)

Passages On Inland Waters  with photo section on historic Fair Haven $14.95 includes shipping and tax    Journey with the Jesuits, sail on a cargo schooner during the great gale of 1880 take a night passage aboard “Titania” to Main Duck and have lunch with Captain Dan aboard the lake’s best known cement carrier. The book includes a dozen historic photos by Edna Williams on the Fair Haven waterfront

An excerpt from this ran in Cruising World Magazine Feb 06 issue.

click here for an excerpt from Passages

  Order  from Susan Gateley 12025 Delling Road Wolcott NY 14590 susan@silverwaters.com    315 594 1906 or go directly to www.chimneybluff.com purchase on line

Ariel's World Sorry now  out of print but Click here for excerpt below

Sweet Waters, Stories of Lake Ontario, with special photo supplement by Bill Huff, $18.00 includes shipping and handling. Available by special order allow 7 to 10 days for delivery
Click here for excerpt below

 Mirages Monsters, Myths, and Mysteries of Lake Ontario back in print Dec 06 excerpt below

Mysterious mirages and UFOs are still occasionally part of the Lake Ontario landscape, but it has been many years since a sea monster has been reported here. Yet strange beasts were sighted frequently in both salt and freshwater in the nineteenth century and they came in about as much variation of type and style as today's UFO.

One salt-water sighting reported by an east coast angler in the late 19th century was of a beast that was 80 feet long which spouted blue flames from two horn like structures near the center of its head. Others reported seeing huge serpents that swam at astonishing speeds, or what appeared to be gigantic octopi.   Lake Champlain¹s beast was seen a number of times in the late 1800s and is still occasionally reported and at least a half dozen other lakes in North America have been said to contain large, possibly dangerous beasts of an unknown species.

The prime habitat of these North American lake monsters seems to be deep, cold-water lakes. Flat Head Lake, Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, and Lake Memphremagog in Quebec all claim a history of monster sightings dating back to Native American stories. There are also a number of Iroquois tales from Ontario¹s shores that involve huge horned serpents and other large water beasts such as giant slug like creatures said to live at the bottom of a number of smaller lakes in upstate NY.

One wonders, with so many stories of such a widespread nature, could some of these tales have been founded on actual sightings? There is a tendency in our western tradition with its written records to dismiss Indian legends based on oral history as being unreliable. Yet some of the Indian tales appear to preserve detailed and accurate information for hundreds of years. When Champlain met with tribes on the St. Lawrence in the 1600's he found the tribes "remembered" Cartier's visit nearly a century before and gave accounts of trading for steel tools and of eating hard tack and drinking red wine with him then.(The story tellers recounted the red wine as being blood).

The Jesuit chronicler Pierre Charlevoix also records in the 1700's an Indian tale of a giant "elk" with long reddish hair and legs so long it could walk easily through deep snow. This "elk" was also said to have an arm somewhat like that of a man. Charlevoix's account reads in part "There is also a very diverting tradition among the Indians of a great elk, of such a monstrous size that the rest are like pismires in comparison of him; his legs say they, are so long that eight feet of snow are not the least incumbrance to him. His hide is proof against all manner of weapons, and he has a sort of arm proceeding from his shoulders which he uses as we do ours. He is always attended by a vast number of elks which form his court and which render him all the services he requires."Given the vagaries of translation and time, this sounds to me like a fair description of an ice age mastodon or mammoth, both of which were present in the Lake Ontario region within the last 3-to 4000 years when the first paleo Indians were also present and which moved in herds. So perhaps at least in the past, there were also strange beasts living in the lake's depths that were remembered in legend and story.

A number of early accounts describe Lake Ontario monsters as looking like giant serpents that swam very rapidly at the surface. Some of these undulating long snake like sea monster sightings might have a basis in fact. On a glassy calm day, an isolated bow or quarter wave generated by a distant steamer can travel many miles, and its dark ripple across the surface can look like a swimming creature.

I've been sailing several times with people who upon viewing such a wake for the first time expressed amazement that a mere wave could be so conspicuous and odd looking. In the 19th century, the lake also really did have a ³monster² fish of sorts, the sturgeon. These sluggish brown fish grew up to eight feet long and sometimes foraged in the lake¹s then clear shallows. They probably would have appeared considerably bigger underwater than they really were, especially if there were nothing else nearby to suggest a scale of size.

But what if there really is something more mysterious than a large species of fish in Lake Ontario¹s watery depths?  During the last ice age, there was a period when the level of Lake Ontario¹s basin was well below that of present day. Salt water then reached up the river and filled the lake. At that time, the St. Lawrence was an arm of the sea and Lake Champlain, Ontario, and presumably, Lake Memphremagog in Quebec, were all filled with salt water. That so-called marine invasion left these lakes with several species that subsequently adapted to freshwater life and continued to thrive.

The original Atlantic salmon population, the deep water sculpin, and the little shrimp-like Mysis all originally were marine species. So perhaps a few plesiosaurs or an ichthyosaur or two also got trapped after the land rebounded from the weight of the glaciers and the lakes again became fresh. As in Lock Ness, we haven't yet proved they are here, but if they exist anywhere, they certainly could be here!

Some Lake Ontario "Mysteries" like the flying frogs and mirages aren't really so very mysterious though their explanations can be quite fascinating themselves). But there are true mysteries too on this sweet waters ea. No one has yet found that chest of gold reported lost near Main Duck Island in the 1760's. And no one has totally unraveled the mystery of how Lake Ontario's eels navigate thousands of miles back to the Sargasso Sea at the end of their lives. Where do lucky rocks, those white banded black beach pebbles come from? And where do the lake's fall migrating dragon flies go each September? May true mysteries man-made and natural still remain on this inland sea.

This article was adapted from Susan P Gateley's book Mirages Monsters myths and Mysteries of Lake Ontario available from the author for $9.00 order from her susan@silverwaters.com

or from  12025 Delling Rd, Wolcott, NY 14590
Make check payable to Susan Gateley

Sweet Waters

Stories of Fishing Sailing Romance and Adventure limited supply left

This book by Susan Peterson Gateley collects the memories and tales of a half dozen "old salts" and sailors. The book is divided into three sections, the first dealing with memories of sailing, the second with the world of work on and by the lake, and the third with sailing sweet water today.  Tales are told by Don Knapp of Port Bay, Guy Hance, Bruce Sodervick and Eugene Kruse of Sodus Bay and by other sailors and old salts. Huff’s photos include his own of the Arney’s fishing and marina  and historic photos.

Chimney Bluffs on the south shore of Lake Ontario