Lay Day at Marquette Bay

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 120 - July 29, 2017

We had chosen Marquette Bay and pushed ourselves to get here yesterday because it is the best anchorage close to Mackinac Island. It is only 12 miles from here to Mackinac Island, and we wanted to make the cruise to Mackinac Island short in case of rough conditions.  This gave us a lay day, a day off from cruising by choice, not because of weather!

We used most of the day to good advantage, doing some long-deferred boat cleaning! I will not kid you, it is still not as clean as the folks who have the big yachts and spend half their day every day in a marina with their brushes, rags, cleaning fluids and what-not! I guess when you have a big expensive yacht, or if you are going to sell your trawler at the end of your Loop, you are highly motivated to clean it daily! We have had Daydream for twelve years, and have no intention of selling it. We also are planning to have Bitter End Boatworks detail it again when we get back. Still, we are living on it for maybe four more months, and we do have a modicum of pride of ownership! So we cleaned what we could! 

There is a small private beach at the far end of the big sandy beach where I have been taking Baxter, and we have enjoyed watching the family play there today! They have it very nicely set up with chairs, a swinging chair, some small boats and a flagpole. There is no cottage visible - it must be a little ways up in the woods, because we can hear them when they are not at the beach. We are pretty sure they were playing lawn darts. Who remembers Jarts lawn darts? I think they were taken off the market because the metal tips of the darts could really hurt you if they went astray! I never got hurt, and my Dad really loved playing Jarts! There were several couples, some kids and three dogs. The dogs raced up and down the beach. The littlest one really went lickety-split, maybe a quarter of a mile from the beach to the adjacent private dock and back! Baxter would have loved playing with them!

Nice private beach at Marquette Bay

A week or so ago, I used the Michigan State Parks and Harbors online reservation system, and we have reservations for Sunday and Monday at the Mackinac State Docks. This, we are told, may well be the highlight of the entire Loop! We are excited to get there!

For those tracking our progress, Monday, July 31st, will mark the end of our first four months since launching on April 1st, the nominal halfway point!  

Marquette Bay, Marquette Island, Michigan

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 119 - July 28, 2017

No track today! Today was a different cruising day from yesterday!  We first had to cruise from Pilot Cove to De Tour Passage, maybe 20 miles, in the North Channel.  While we crossed the North Channel from Turnbull Island to Drummond Island in nearly flat water, today the North Channel treated us to two foot plus waves. Fortunately, the wind was from the east, and after we had gone north a little bit and turned west, we were basically surfing a following sea. It was calmer, as you would expect in De Tour Passage, which passes between Drummond Island and Crowe Island, but soon we emerged onto Lake Huron!

It was another 38 miles on Lake Huron to Marquette Bay. Huron also treated us to big waves, probably two to three feet, but again, we were mainly surfing the following sea, and while it was exciting, we have been in worse! It was worth it though, since we were treated to a wonderful anchorage in Marquette Bay!

Screenshot of Marquettte Bay anchorage

Marquette Island is the largest of the 36 islands in the Les Cheneaux archipelago of northern Michigan,  We entered from Lake Huron by the West Entrance, and turned right so we could tuck into the very protected southeast corner of Marquette Bay. If we had proceed up the waterway, we would have come to Hessel, at the far end, which is home to a famous wooden boat festival.

Marquette Bay  is quite a large bay, and has only a few cottages around it. It also has a nice sandy beach with no cottages and no "No Trespassing" signs, which I take to mean it is accessible to the public! Baxter loved running up and down the beach, and I let him go, since there was really no place there for him to get into trouble!

Beach at Marquette Bay
Notable for what you DON'T see - cottages and "No Trespassing" signs!

We spent a pleasant day on the boat, and were treated to a magnificent sunset!

Marquette Bay sunset

Pilot Cove, Drummond Island (Back in the U.S.!)

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 118 - July 27, 2017

Just as nasty as the weather was yesterday, it was beautiful today! SailFlow told us the winds would be light for our crossing from Turnbull Island to Drummond Island. Drummond Island is the end of the North Channel. After leaving Drummond Island, we will be cruising on Lake Huron! It was an easy crossing. We cleared U.S. customs by phone with the NEXUS Pleasure Boat Reporting System when we got in U.S. waters.

Screenshot of Turnbull Island to Pilot Cove, Drummond Island Track

We found Pilot Cove on the northeastern corner of Drummond Island, cruised in, and anchored up! The entrance is very narrow, shallow and kind of hidden. The water is so clear that you can see the rocks on the bottom, and they look like they are about a foot below the surface, but the depth was never less than about four feet. I stood bow watch and Patty drove Daydream in very slowly. Once inside, there was plenty of depth, and a great spot to land Baxter without having to do acrobatics on rock ledges! This anchorage is very protected, and we thought isolated, but four ATVs later came cruising in to the clearing above my landing spot. There is no road that I could see, and they came the last little way running their rigs though the shallow water along the shore! Here is our track for the day!

Our Pilot Cove anchorage

In the afternoon, I went swimming and cleaned the waterline scum off the port side of the boat. I had cleaned the starboard side at Frying Pan Bay on Georgian Bay, but not the port side. The hull still has some stains, but at least the waterline scum is gone now! We had a nice marinated beef and vegetable kebob dinner grilled to perfection on the Magma.

The plan for tomorrow is to go to to Marquette Island (only 15 miles from Mackinac Island) for two days, and then on Sunday go to the Mackinac Island State Marina, where we will stay two nights. We are looking forward to touring Mackinac Island and especially the world famous fudge!

Turnbull Island Weather Day

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 117 - July 26, 2017

Today was a weather day at Turnbull Island - and boy, was it!

The winds out on the North Channel were in the upper teens with gusts in the high 20s. No way we wanted to be out there cruising! But it was not such a nice day here in our protected anchorage either!

I took Baxter to shore just as soon as I got up. I weighed the question: before coffee or after? But before coffee won, and a good thing that it did! I took him in, he did his business, and we came back to the boat. Only moments after we returned to the boat, the sky opened up with a torrential rain storm, which persisted unabated until after 3:00 p.m.! The wind was driving the rain sideways! Here is a video of 15 seconds rain! Sorry, no other pics today! 

After the rain let up, I took Baxter to shore again. One more time tomorrow morning. Turnbull Island is a great anchorage, but it has a very sorry excuse for a place to land a dog! I am getting far too good at acrobatics on rock ledges!

Turnbull Island

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 116 - July 25, 2017

We knew the winds were going to be light today, so we made an extra effort to be at the fuel dock at the Little Current Town Docks promptly at 8:00 a.m. We fueled up, bought ice and headed west out the channel!  We forgot to turn on track recording, so no track screenshot today!

When we got out of Little Current, the water was like glass. We were originally planning to go to the Eagle Island anchorage about 25 miles away, and to Sanford Island the following day, another 25 miles or so. But looking at the conditions today, and looking at SailFlow's forecast for tomorrow (not good, winds in the mid to high teens), we decided to enjoy today's favorable conditions and go directly to Sanford. 

We had also been planning to take the protected northerly route that you enter at the very narrow Little Detroit Passage and cruise Whalesback Channel, but since it was so smooth out in the middle of the North Channel, we decided just to continue up the middle of the North Channel.  We saw very few boats where we were cruising, and heard a LOT of securite calls for vessels entering Little Detroit! 

We made very good time and arrived in the vicinity of Sanford and Turnbull Islands around 3 p.m. It was all smooth cruising except the last four or five miles, when the wind picked up, which was not forecast by SailFlow. We were seeing 1-2 foot waves, which are not terrible but a little bit uncomfortable taken on the beam! 

We were planning to enter Sanford Island from the north per the Active Captain recommendation, which required us to come up around Turnbull Island, so we turned north out of the main North Channel, which also put us in more protected waters. Looking at Garmin Blue Chart Mobile and the Active Captain reviews for for Turnbull as were passing over the top of the island, we saw that it was considerably better protected than Sanford Island. The major rap in the reviews of the Turnbull Island anchorage was that it was always too crowded, so we again deviated from our plan and poked into the Turnbull Island north anchorage to take a look (you can see that there is also a south anchorage as well, both are well reviewed as four star anchorages). When we got inside, it was not crowed at all. It is a large anchorage, and when we arrived, there were about five or six other boats here, all in different parts. We picked our spot, dropped anchor, and got the dinghy down. Here is a screenshot of our anchorage.

Turnbull Island anchorage

As usual ,the first thing I did was take Baxter to shore - which proved considerably more difficult than I like. Like many places we have anchored in Georgian Bay and the North Channel, there is no "beach,"  just rock faces that come down to the water, where in the best case, I will find a nice rock ledge with about a foot of water over it extending a couple of feet (ideally five or six feet) out from the waterline. The problem here is that the water is so clear that you cannot accurately judge how far it is down to the ledge! The first spot I picked looked like ti was about a foot deep but when I probed with my kayak paddle, it was more like four feet deep. It would have been a rude shock to have tried to get out of the kayak there! I finally found a MARGINALLY acceptable spot, which will have to do. It is not a nice ledge but rather shallow rocks. The footing on the shallow rocks is tricky, and there is a fair to middling chance that I will take an unintentional swim before we leave this place!

The weather today was sunny and warm all day. We had a nice dinner on the cockpit, and are really appreciating our fancy rectangular Magma grill we bought in Friday Harbor after accidentally dropping the innards of our old round Magma in the water.  We spent the evening reading in the cabin when the mosquitoes came out! 

SailFlow tells us that the winds on the North Channel tomorrow will once again be in the mid to high teens, and that is not even looking at the gusts, so we are taking a weather day tomorrow and staying put at Turnbull Island.  The forecast for Thursday is once again for light winds, so we should be in good shape to head across to Drummond Island and re-enter the U.S.

Amazingly, we have two bars of Bell cell signal here, which is just enough for me to tether the Chromebook so I can write this blog! 

Weather Day in Little Current

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 115 - July 24, 2017

This was our weather day in Little Current. SailFlow told us that according to the North Channel buoy, the winds would be too high for comfortable cruising until mid or afternoon today. A lot of boats left Little Current betting that the winds would abate in the afternoon. We had extended for an extra day yesterday, since we were not anxious to go out into rough waters in the North Channel! As far as we could tell sitting at Slip B-13 at the Town Docks, the winds did not abate one little bit. SailFlow likewise tells us that tomorrow the winds will be very light pretty much all day. So we are planning to head out early tomorrow morning!

Since we are still trying to figure out the best way for us to get from Little Current down to Mackinac Island, I went over to John and Mary Morgan's Mainship 350 Passport with my iPad in hand. I had waypoints set for the places that seemed to Patty and me like the most logical stopping points for each day, seeking their input as experienced North Channel cruisers. Our objective was not to see every single wonderful anchorage in the North Channel, and there are literally thousands, but to get to Mackinac Island by Sunday, July 30, some time after the 1:00 p.m. check-in time! Like many places you could easily spend a month cruising the North Channel. Their input was helpful, and Patty and I finally settled on at least a tentative plan. I'm sure it will change once we get cruising!

Patty came over to Passport to tell me that the Firestones had called to invite us over to their fifth wheel above Spider Bay Marina, since when we saw them yesterday, they were not aware that we would be staying one more day. We walked over to the parking lot above Spider Bay Marina where their fifth wheel was parked and had another great visit in their Hitch-Hiker fifth wheel, and said our goodbyes all over again! 

When I got back to Daydream, I saw two C-Dorys cruising by, and tried to hail them on the VHF radio, but was not able to make contact. I did see that they had pulled into the fuel dock. Later I walked over to the East docks (we are in the West docks, the Little Current Town Docks have two sets of three floating docks, East and West, separated by a sea wall where the fuel dock is and really large yachts typically tie up). I found Bill and Becky from Florida on a CD25 Cruiser named Blue Days and Dale and Carol from Alabama on a CD22 Cruiser named Wee Bit. They invited us back for drinks at 6:00 p.m., and we of course accepted the invitation!

Becky and Carol had some pretty good appetizers, including hummus, cheese, salami, crackers and watermelon slices! We spent about three and a half hours just talking and getting to know each other, but the time passed really quickly! Bill was a quality control guy for the Jacksonville industrial brewery with the initials "A-B" (Annheuser-Busch, AKA Budweiser).  I told Bill I had founded a microbrewery, and we compared a few notes on their approach to quality control on an industrial scale and ours on a micro scale! Bill also explained the origin of the boat name Blue Days. As he got more senior at A-B, he got increasingly more and more vacation time, until he was up to twelve weeks a year, but it had to be scheduled a year in advance. Bill and Becky typically took Bill's vacation in two week blocks, which they would mark on the calendar with a blue highlighter - those came to be known as the "blue days." Not "blue" as in sad days, but colored blue for the happy days! Becky was a mom and homemaker. Dale was a hydrogeologist, and Carol a real estate appraiser. I mentioned that in my career as Snoqualmie City attorney, I had a lot of contact with both real estate appraisers and hydrogeologists!  When Patty said she had been a teacher and a substitute teacher, they thanked her for her service twice!

We of course talked about C-Dorys and the C-Dory family, including our mutual friends Bob and Marie Austin from Pensacola, whom they know from the Hontoon Island CBGT (C-Brat Get-Together). Like all C-Dory owners, they also knew of Bill and El Fiero and Halcyon and Bill's great website Halcyon Days - Cruising America. All in all, a very pleasant evening that went by too quickly! We implored a nearby boater on sea wall to take this photo!

Back row: Carol, Bill, Dale and Pat
Front row: Becky and Patty

At Little Current Town Dock

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 114 - July 23, 2017

When we arrived in Little Current yesterday, we registered for two nights at the Town Dock because our friends Flint and Leslie Firestone were coming in today in the afternoon.  So we had the morning free to do some more nothing! So this will be a short one today!

Patty showered and did laundry. I wrote the blog post for yesterday. I went up to the Food Land supermarket for tonic water for our G&Ts, and found that Canada does indeed  - as far as I can tell, in this one single store - have SOME kind of corned beef hash! Not canned corned beef hash but in a plastic tube sort of like Jimmy Dean Sausage - another product that seems unknown here, by the way. I spent some more time trying to figure out our route from Little Current to Mackinac Island, although we have still not settled exactly on our route and anchorages. 

In the afternoon, Flint and Leslie found us on our dock. They are staying with friends on a boat in the next marina over, Spider Bay. They came in their rain gear, as it had been raining on and off all day, and was cold, or as we remarked "It's a really mild day for December!" We had a great time visiting with them on our cockpit. They live on their C-Dory Venture 26 in Marathon, Florida, but have a Hitchhiker fifth wheel, which they towed here and have parked behind Spider Bay Marina. They have been traveling in the fifth wheel for quite awhile now, and I think Flint said they have towed about 12,000 miles on this trip. We are thinking in the next year or two we need to take a trip to the Keys. Maybe a road trip, maybe charter a boat, maybe rent a condo, but we need to go down there, since we will not be able to see the Keys on our Loop. 

We got this photo when their friends came to take them back to Spider Bay.

Flint, Pat, Leslie and Patty on a cold, gray July day in Little Current!

After the Firestones returned to Spider Bay, we took a last look at the SailFlow app on the iPad, which is a great tool that reports and forecasts winds from buoys in many different location. We did not like the winds we were seeing for tomorrow in the North Channel, so I went up to the office and extended for one more night. In the evening, there was thunder and a torrential downpour. We plugged in our little electric heater, turned it up to "high," had supper,  and were snug inside as we read our Kindles until we went to bed. We left the heater on all night! So much for "summer" in the North Channel!

Little Current

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 113 - July 22, 2017

It was a very short cruise from Killarney to Little Current on Manitoulin Island, where I had made reservations for two nights at the Little Current Town Dock.  There was one boat ahead of us for the staff to bring in and get docked, so we had to stand off a short while. When it was our turn, fortunately, our slip was dead ahead of where we were bobbing around, and I did not need to do any tricky maneuvers to get into the slip. There is quite a bit of current here, as Skipper Bob warned. We watched one large boat come in and start sliding sideways and hit a dinghy on the stern of a sailboat, which lucky for the driver of the errant boat simply acted like a huge fender! He went back out and tried again, and it was not pretty, but with the help of the marina staff, he finally got in and tied up! Here is the track. The goofy green squiggles at the Little Current end of the track are because i forgot to turn recording off on Garmin Blue Chart!

Screenshot of Killarney to Little Current Track

 Our friends Flint and Leslie Firestone are planning to be here tomorrow afternoon, and we will get together. They will have their trailer parked at Spider Bay Marina, which appears to be pretty close to the Little Current Town Docks. Amazingly, when I was looking at my Facebook page today, my "On this day 1 year ago" was pictures of the Firestones visiting us at Birch Bay and at the Peace Arch Park at the U.S. - Canada border in Blaine!

As were walking back to the boat from registering at the marina office, a woman sitting at a picnic table with her family said "Hello, Loopers." I supposed she saw us docking and saw our AGLCA burgee, but actually she said she follows my blog (which as of this morning, has 26,917 page views). She said she follows most of the Great Loop blogs, which is astounding to me, because there are a LOT of Great Loop blogs! Anyway, Mary and John Morgan are from Mackinaw City, MI, and have a Mainship 350 trawler named Passport. They are traveling with their daughter Kelly, son-in-law Don Crandall and grandchildren Owen and Izzy. 

And now from the "Department of It's a Small World Department"! As we were talking about where we were from, I mentioned we had lived most of our married life in Fall City, WA. Don perked up, and said he was from Snoqualmie Valley, and did we know his parents, Ken Crandall and Judy Lee Crandall? Boy, did we! Ken and I were at Mount Si High School at the same time. Patty had substitute taught in Judy's kindergarten class. Patty had played bridge with Don's grandmother, Joyce Lee, and his grandfather, Don Lee, who died at a relatively young age, was my high school football coach!

Izzy Crandall, Pat and Patty Anderson on left, John Morgan, Owen Crandall and Jelly Morgan on right

Later in the afternoon, we walked to the grocery store and LCBO. On the way, we passed something you do not see much any more in this age of ubiquitous cell phones: a pay telephone booth!

Anybody remember these?

There was also a nice historical mural on a wall.

Little Current Mural

Later in the afternoon, Owen and Izzy came by Daydream to invite us over for "docktails" with their family, and we enjoyed more good conversation and the Morgans' appetizers! We told them we were planning to stay at St. Ignace and take the ferry to Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Island, but they told us we really should stay at the State of Michigan Marina on Mackinac Island to get the best experience of Mackinac Island. They also told us about the State of Michigan's online marina reservation system.

Other conversation around the dock centered on the winds on the North Channel. We have been planning to leave Monday morning, but SailFlow tells us on Monday the winds, while not awful, will be much lighter on Tuesday and for the rest of the week. I am now thinking we will extend for another day here, no point in going out and getting our fillings knocked loose!

The last thing I did in the evening was to create my State of Michigan State Parks and Harbors account for online reservations, and we now have confirmed reservations for the State Marina on Mackinac Island for July 30 and 31st!  Barring adverse winds, which we are not seeing on SailFlow for the rest of this week, we should be anchored somewhere nearby a couple of days before our scheduled arrival date, and if we do encounter adverse winds, we have a couple of days cushion!

Lay Day in Killarney

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 112 - July 21, 2017

Today was a very welcome lay day, a day off from cruising. We just stayed put at our anchorage behind Pine Island in Killarney and relaxed. No track today because we didn't travel, no pictures because I didn't take any!

What do you do when you have nothing your have to do? Patty read one entire book on her Kindle. The first thing I did after breakfast was to get out Skipper Bob and Garmin Blue Chart with Active Captain on the iPad and try to figure out where we would stay each night on the North Channel. A couple of days in Little Current on Manitoulin Island in a marina, then Hotham Island anchorage, Sanford Island anchorage, West Grant Island anchorage, De Tour Village  (back in U.S.) at a marina, then Marquette Bay anchorage, and on to Mackinaw Island! That's the plan anyway, we will see what the weather lets us actually do!

After that, I was going to go swimming but it seemed too windy almost all day. I took a PTA bath on the swim step. I did my laundry.  I took Baxter to shore a couple of times and took a couple of recreational paddles in the kayak, one with dog and one without! I paddled over to the sailboat that has been anchored up the channel most of the time we have been here, where I met Nils, a most interesting character!

Nils has a 22 foot sailboat named Norway. I am going to go out on a limb here and take a wild guess that he is Norwegian! Nils is from Montreal, and trailered his sailboat to Killarney. When he got to the anchorage, he realized he had left all his clothes in his van at the marina, he had nothing but a swimsuit and a teeshirt! We chatted about a wide variety of topics while I was bobbing in the kayak alongside his sailboat. Like us, he was going to go to Covered Portage Cove to anchor, but the guy at the marina steered him to our little anchorage, just as the lady at the LCBO had steered us here. I think we were both glad to be here. Nils had been watching large yacht after large yacht head into Covered Portage Cove, and we both thought the serenity and beauty of our little anchorage beat the living daylights out of bumping around among a bunch of large yachts!

Patty and I had the smoked whitefish from Herbert Fisheries with crackers for lunch, and fried one of the two trout fillets we purchased for dinner, both of which were excellent. We still have another trout fillet and a whitefish filled, both vacuum packed, in our freezer. 

I have been reading a book entitled The Rabbi's Gift by Chuck Gould on my Kindle. Chuck is the former editor of Nor'Westing Magazine, and had the good sense to publish my article on the rise and fall of various iterations of C-Dory ownerships in Nor'Westing in 2011. I have learned the rest of the story, and could update the article, but Nor'Westing is no longer being published. Anyway, I spent a few hours before going to bed reading Chuck's book, and I am enjoying it a lot!

So that is how you spend pretty much an entire day when you have nothing you have to do! 

Killarney

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 111 - July 20, 2017

We slept until 7:30 a.m. this morning - the stress of yesterday must have taken its toll on us! The first thing we noticed was that the water at our Dead Island anchorage was dead flat - no breeze and not even a ripple on the water! So we decided that we would leave just as soon as I had taken Baxter to shore and we would have breakfast underway. We had one cup of coffee (we do not MOVE without that first cup of coffee!), I took Baxter in, put the kayak back on top, and we were underway!

We had a choice of threading the needle inside, or just heading directly outside for the shortest distance. We chose the latter! When we got outside, Georgian Bay was as calm this morning as it had been lumpy yesterday! There were a few ripples, but no waves or big swells. This does not affect our cruising speed (a blazing 6.67 staute miles per hour, or 5.6 knots), only our comfort. We could run faster, but economy is cut in half to get an extra mile per hour or two, so not really worth it. We decided it would be better to go back inside at the last opportunity, since if it got rough, it would be a LONG way on the outside with no way to get back inside until we arrived in Killarney. This turned out to be the correct decision! It was really calm inside, and the last little bit, Collins Inlet, is about as pretty a passage as you will ever see anywhere. But when we came out of Collins Inlet, we had four to five miles to go outside on Georgian Bay before we reached Killarney Channel, and by this time, Georgian Bay on the outside had turned pretty snotty. We had no choice but to slog through it, and it was pretty uncomfortable. This will be our final memory of Georgian Bay, along with the rocks from yesterday! We just lucked out going outside for the longer run fairly early in the morning today! 

Here is today's track from Dead Island to Killarney, you can easily see where we are inside or outside! The first long run outside was in nearly flat water, the last run just before Killarney Channel was rough! There is actually a channel where it looks like we are going over land!

Track from Dead Island to Killarney

Screenshot of Killarney Anchorage
behind Pine Island

We thought we might stay at Killarney Mountain Lodge and Marina, so I called as we were cruising, but they were fully booked. There are other marinas, but one that had room (it was in fact nearly empty, as we saw) was Sportsman's Inn, which had no showers. We would just as soon not shower at anchor as not shower in a marina!  Actually, bathing is not really a problem as long as we are on a fresh water body!

Killarney runs along a channel, with most stuff on the north side. We were planning on two stops, the LCBO and Herbert Fisheries for fresh fish for the freezer and take-out fish and chips for supper. As it happens, the LCBO and Herbert's are right next to each other and share a dock! The lady at the LCBO gave us a map showing us an anchorage in the little channel behind Pine Island and told us it was a very protected anchorage and not nearly so busy as Covered Portage, which is the most popular anchorage in the area. We are in a dandy little spot, and it is very pleasant here. We will hang here tomorrow to relax and recuperate by taking a day off from cruising before tackling the North Channel.

Daydream anchored behind Pine Island in Killarney

Pat in Sea Eagle kayak

Baxter has been to shore and I took a recreational paddle in the kayak. Patty took a complete bath and hair washing on the swim step since we are totally secluded here. I will probably go swimming tomorrow, with my shampoo, Dial and washcloth, since it is pretty warm here.  We have yet to use the Helio shower, since we either shower in a marina or bath in the fresh water!

Killarney is the end of the Georgian Bay, which we entered back at Port Severn where we finished the Trent-Severn Canal.  Next we need to transit the North Channel down to Drummond Island, where we re-enter the U.S. We need to study up on the North Channel, so we will look at Skipper Bob and Active Captain tomorrow - we never did get around to buying the Ports Guide, and now that we have only 100 miles to go to Drummond Island, we are pretty sure we can manage without it!

As of today, we have cruised 2,644 miles. I checked the distances remaining, and according to Captain John, we have only 2,350 more miles to go to cross our wake at River Forest Yacht Center on the Okeechobee Waterway! Still don't know where we will be on September 1st for our 50th anniversary, but pretty sure now we will be past Chicago!

A Rocky Day on the Georgian Bay

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 110 - July 19, 2017

We got away from the Pointe au Baril Town Dock much later than we wanted to, about 10:30 a.m., but we enjoyed our dockside conversation with a couple from Colorado who have a cottage near here. We passed the Pointe au Baril lighthouse on the way out.

Pointe au Baril Lighthouse

At son Austin's request for a "map" of where we were, we recorded our entire track for the day. I will probably do that for all subsequent days. I know Sam Landsman does that for the "Slow Boat" flotilla, and it really does help show where they were. So here is our entire track for today. The track covers a bit more than 40 miles, so there is not a lot of detail, but it shows generally where we were between Pointe au Baril and Dead Island, where we are anchored right now. The green track line starts inland up at the end of the Pointe au Baril Town Dock, runs west out Point au Baril Channel, and then turns north, alternately in the  "inside" and "outside" Small Boat Channel, up to the boat icon on the east side of Dead Island. 

Today's track - Pointe au Baril to Dead Island

There was a nice sunset tonight here at Dead Island, which is a Skipper Bob recommended anchorage, with no Active Captain entries. It is reasonably well protected, and has reasonable shore access in our kayak, so it meets our criteria! As we were reflecting, we anchor out most of the time, and we like it, while most of the other Loopers head for a marina every night. We almost always cook on-board, while most other Loopers seem to eat most of their meal in restaurants. Each to his own, I suppose. Swinging on the hook at sunset is one of the things we enjoy most!

Dead Island Sunset

Now, on to the rocky day! The day started our well enough as we cruised out the Pointe au Baril Channel, and passed the Pointe au Baril lighthouse. Almost immediately after leaving the Pointe au Baril Channel, we had to go "outside" to the big open waters. It was a bit lumpy, but that was to be expected. I had carefully marked where we needed to turn to get back "inside" at Hangdog Channel. There was just one problem, and this is where things got really harrowing for about half an hour.

Navigation apps all have a recommended course line.  The dotted red line showing the so-called recommended course, as well as the red and green channel buoys, would have taken us directly over a chain of rocks over which waves were breaking, or at least that is the way it appeared to me! No rocks are even shown on either the Garmin Blue Chart or the Navionics app, but there they were, staring us right in the face, right where the recommended course line was, or where it appeared to me to be. Patty is no so sure, but she was not at the helm! So we stopped outside the rocks pondering our options. The screenshot of this section of our track shows our indecision about what to do!

Track at Hangdog Channel to go back inside

In the end, we did not agree, but I could see that once we had gotten in among the rocks, it was impossible to turn around, and even if we had, we would still have been left with the quandary of what to do next. I could see a red day mark some distance away marking the entrance to the channel I wanted to take, but since we could not get there on the recommended course line, or so it appeared, I tried to pick out a course parallel to the recommended course line that (1) had no exposed rocks, and (B) did not have any waves breaking over rocks. This was a narrow pathway, with exposed rocks and breaking waves VERY close on both sides, but we went very slowly, and Patty watched for rocks, which she could see below the surface right next to and even below us. She was terrified, but I slowed to about two miles an hour, just enough to maintain steering, and picked my way toward the red day mark as best I could. 

We made it to the safely to the red daymark and entered the channel without hitting any rocks, and it probably helped that the water level is actually about three feet above the soundings, but this experience shattered my confidence in Blue Chart, Navionics and some of the daymarks.  Or maybe it should have shattered my confidence in my ability to follow a recommended course. Either way, this was just about as harrowing a situation as we have ever been in on the boat.  We did not take any pictures because we were both too busy trying to get safely though the rocks!

The rest of the way was a combination of more unpleasant things, but not really so harrowing. When we were inside following the recommended course line and the day marks, we were mostly dodging rocks a few feet on either side of the channel. I cannot imagine how the big yachts are going to do this. Perhaps they will run outside most of the time, but then they would miss the fabled Georgian Bay scenery. Then we had another long run outside, which by now was more than lumpy. where everything inside came crashing down to the floor, including the generator, which spilled a bit of gas on the cabin floor, and the Endless Breeze fan, which broke off one of the feet on which it rests. We'll be looking for some Super Glue and hoping for the best there. Back home I can fabricate some new feet, maybe nice hardwood, but here we are stuck with some kind of Bandaid solution!

We finally got to Dead Island, anchored, and I took Baxter to shore. Then we collapsed into our folding chairs in the cockpit with our G&Ts, pretty stressed out. My mood improved a bit, since Patty fixed one of our favorite suppers, yam and garlic filled enchiladas with mole sauce, with thanks to Boundary Bay Brewery in Bellingham for the inspiration!

We have heard many times that Georgian Bay is the "finest fresh water cruising in the world." We had three great days, at Frying Pan Bay, Port Rawson Bay, and Pointe au Baril Town Dock. But for us, it has been downright unpleasant at best and potentially disasterous at worst today. We went through all this today in our little shallow draft, narrow beam C-Dory feeling glad we do not have a larger boat! Right now we are both thinking that we cannot get down to Lake Michigan soon enough!

Pointe au Baril Town Dock

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 109 - July 18, 2017

We left Port Rawson Bay about 9:30 a.m. headed for Snug Haven, but when we got there it was too early to stop, so we decided to go on to the Pointe au Baril Town Dock. This turned out to be an excellent choice!

It was a long cruising day, about seven hours, and although we were in the inside Small Boat Channel, it was mostly broad expanses of fairly open water, without too much scenery! So there is not too much to say about the day's cruising!

Daydream at Pointe au Baril Town Dock
with kayak moved to bow for sunshine on solar panels!

Pointe au Baril Town Dock Office and public washrooms

Our resources had outdated information on the Pointe au Baril Town Dock. Skipper Bob said there were two floating docks at the Town Dock. The last Active Captain review was from 2014. and although it was mostly correct, it stated that overnight docking at the Town Dock was free but there was a 25 foot length limit. In fact, there are now four floating docks, and they are free for day use but there is a (very reasonable) $0.55 per foot overnight docking fee. The floating docks are in excellent condition. 

I added an updated Active Captain review with this information, and supplemented with information from the young ladies who seem to manage the Town Dock. There is a "semi-official" 30 foot length limit, but they may allow longer boats. Definitely no large yachts. The Town Dock Office is in a faux lighthouse which also has public washrooms that are open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. And trash disposal!

When you cruise and mostly anchor out like we do, it does not take too long for the trash can to get full up to the top no matter how vigorously you manually compact it! The national and provincial parks do not provide any trash cans. We were kind of at our limit on trash, and were hoping we would be able to dispose of our trash for a fee. It turns out there is a transfer station near the store, but even better, between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., there is a trash wagon pulled by a small tractor where you can deposit your trash at no charge.

The only thing that kept me from giving the Pointe au Baril Town Dock a five star rating was the lack of power and water, but overall, this is a great find, a hidden jewel off the main Small Boat Channel!

Home Hardware and CCY General Store

The Town Dock is a very busy place!  It is right below the Home Hardware and CCY General Store, which appears to be the center of social life in the town! 

This store indeed has just about everything a cottager or boater could really ever need! Groceries, meat, sundries and of course paint, plumbing supplies, electrical supplies, lumber and hardware! While we were there, cottagers would pull up in small boats, go into the store, and come back down with boxes in the dock carts. This was a constant parade! We naturally had to go up and spend a bunch of money on essentials ourselves like jars of candied nuts, more Johnsonville Brats, and a lot more! It is funny how the bill adds up when you are not shopping from a list but just putting whatever you want into the shopping basket! One thing we wanted was tortillas, but evidently if you want tortillas in Pointe au Baril, you have to make them yourself!

There is an LCBO liquor store, a gas station with a deli, and a restaurant that reputedly has awesome fish and chips about a five minute walk away up on the main road. although we did not visit any of these. All in all, Pointe au Baril Town Dock was a great stop that fit our needs to a tee!

Port Rawson Bay

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 108 - July 17, 2017

This morning we had a very leisurely morning at Frying Pan Bay. We spent a bit of time with Skipper Bob and Active Captain on the iPad, trying to figure out exactly where we wanted to go today. We thought Twelve Mile Bay sounded good, and Skipper Bob said there was a place to go ashore. A neighboring Canadian boater heard us talking and offered to let us look at Ports cruising guide. When we checked the Ports guide, it was clear that no shore access of any kind is allowed at Twelve Mile Bay.  We probably should get a Ports guide, and we have lost a bit of confidence in Skipper Bob for sure. Also, too many of the Active Captain entries have only one review, by the person who created the entry for the anchorage. We now think in order to have any kind of confidence in an Active Captain anchorage, there needs to be at least six reviews. Not many places in Georgian Bay have six Active Captain reviews. Skipper Bob mentioned Port Rawson Bay in the Missasauga Provincial Park, without any detailed information, but there were eight Active Captain reviews, all good, with a lot of information. Since it is a park, we knew there would be shore access, so that is where we decided to go.  

So we took the bikes off the bow rail, folded them up, put them back in their bags and loaded them back up on the roof. Then I loaded the kayak, and we headed out about 10:30 a.m. - late for us! Port Rawson Bay is about six miles off the inside Small Boat Channel (there is an "inside" and an "outside" Small Boat Channel - the inside channel is more protected and preferred), and it is about 20 miles from Frying Pan Bay to the channel back to Port Rawson Bay, so it was not a long day. We like short days and early arrivals! Cruising from Frying Pan Bay to Port Rawson Bay was a very pretty cruise, with the Small Boat Channel weaving among a lot of small dot islands, mostly just big rocks, several with lighthouses, and almost all the other rocks had a home or cottage on it! The channel back to Port Rawson Bay was also lined with homes and cottages most of the way.

Lighthouse along the route

House on a dot island rock

Active Captain Screenshot - Port Rawson Bay

The Active Captain entry for Port Rawson Bay is a bit vague to say the least! The anchorage symbol is in the middle of a bay that is about two miles long and half a mile wide! We first cruised to the anchor symbol to look around. Port Rawson Bay is more like a big lake than a San Juan Islands type anchorage. We were a bit bewildered where the "park" was!

We noticed a lot of boats that appeared to be rafted over in the southeast corner, and so we headed over there. Actually, most everything is part of the Massasauga Provincial Park, and we also noticed one or two boats in various other spots. But the facilities - the rings for stern ties and the dinghy dock - are all kind of in the southeast corner, where the the we saw the most boats.

Stern-tied boats on Port Rawson Bay

We anchored in about 15 feet about a 50 yards off the dinghy dock. I got the kayak down, and took Baxter in to shore. The dinghy dock is actually too high for easy access from the kayak, but there is a very nice rock ledge covered with about a foot or two of water extending six feet or more out from the shore, which made a very convenient landing spot!

One thing that is apparent is that garbage disposal is going to require a marina stop and a fee! There is simply no publicly accessible place that has trash cans, which we had become accustomed to before we entered Georgian Bay. Pumpouts, we understand, are outrageously expensive because the sewage has to be collected in tanks and hauled away because there is no way to infiltrate it into the solid rock of which Georgian Bay is made. For this, we are thankful for our composting toilet!

I took Baxter on a recreational paddle when he had done his business, and talked to one of the people on one of the half dozen or so boats that were stern tied to shore. They looked like they were all rafted, but they weren't. I was surprised to learn that the people who were all stern tied and looked like they were rafted were not in fact travling together. I guess it is just the way the stern tie rings are set in the rock that causes people who want to use them to need to become rather social! He asked about our boat,and when I told him it was a C-Dory, he immediately said he thought so, and he had read "River Horse."

We had a great dinner of tonkatsu pork and toast - we are kind of out of side dishes, except instant grits! We had no tonkutsu sauce, but a plum sauce we had bought a ways back made an entirely satifactory substitute! I was thinking of cleaning the waterline scum off the other side of the boat from the kayak, but decided that after a G&T and wine with dinner, that was probably not a good idea! We are headed tomorrow for Snug Harbour or Snug Haven, which are right next to each other. We MAY have a restaurant supper tomorrow, Gillies is supposed to be really good! And because it is also a marine store, we are hoping to get our own copy of the Ports guide. We have about 2/3 of Georgian Bay and all of the North Channel to go, so it will most likely be worth it!