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!