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!