07-29 Meaford

 We arrived a day ahead for the Georgian Bay Regatta, so we could do laundry and get ourselves organized. It was motoring in 0-3 all the way from Cape Croker. The facility is bigger and deeper than I thought from looking at the chart, and we had lots of water all the way in to the base of the dock. We highly recommend Pom Pom for ice cream and Station 87 for dinner!

The Reef Boat Club are our gracious hosts for the regatta, and we are looking forward to crew Nick and Marcia arriving soon! It will be a busy time, so don't worry if you hear nothing for a while.

07-28 Little Port Elgin, Cape Croker

Scarcely 3 miles from last night’s spot, but it was a fun day reaching in 20 knots getting here. We put 20 miles on the clock. The impressive escarpment to the west of us, was visible to the east of us yesterday ;-)

07-27 Sydney Bay, Cape Croker

Had a lovely sail down on starboard tack with westerly wind from 0 to 15. We just drove up the middle of the bay and dropped at 20 feet and have been solid in 10-15 knots so far.

There’s a beach and camp ground on the south side but lots of room for everybody. The Niagara Escarpment is prominent on the NW side — very scenic!

07-25 Wingfield Basin

The entry was straighter than I remembered. Just line up the range and drive straight in between the buoys. There were 17 boats in, but we could have fit more. Five big power boats rafted and shared their music with the harbour. 

The Gargantua, an old wrecked steam tug, has deteriorated further, but is still clearly recognizable. 

The Cabot Head light used to be an attraction, but is fading. If you go look, land on the shingle nearer the point, not the obvious sand beach, especially by outboard. Even rowing you will probably strand yourself on a rock 20 metres from shore. 

Reception for VHF and cell are both blocked by the bluffs of Cabot Head, so do any business before coming in off the water. We’re staying an extra day, so with luck I can get the posting backlog cleared tomorrow. We didn’t get a reliable signal off the east side of the Bruce until almost down to Cape Croker.



07-23 Sportsman’s Inn, Killarney

We were very lucky to get a slip on a Wednesday night without a reservation. Others were turned away after we got there about 14:00. By Thursday morning all options were booked solid for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday! Make a reservation well in advance. 

Herbert’s still has the best fish and chips in the world, fresh off the boat! Although it’s up to $32 per basket…

The Sportsman’s used to project movies on the screen across the river, but it’s not in use this year. 

The Sportsman and Killarney Mountain Lodge share the same management and offer lots of upscale dining and spa options, although the clothes dryer wasn’t working. 

The town seemed more crowded and the boat mix seemed to go more towards large power boats. On our sail south we passed a flotilla of five headed north at 24 knots, just in time for a late lunch at Herbert’s.

Definitely not a wilderness destination, not even as much as it was in 2005. 

Of course, I was in a grumpy mood from working on boat plumbing. Our pumps do have a thermal cutout that won’t reset until they are completely cool. They will get hot if they run too long with an airlock preventing pressure shutoff, especially in a compartment with a fully heated HW tank, especially if the tank is leaking some hot water into that steamy space. Now that I have some spares, I was able to fully replace the offending section of tube, white replaced red, since I don’t stock the colours 😉. We will be shutting off the pressure lake water while sailing to avoid sucking air when heeling. 

07-24 Chilling in James Bay

Anchored in the exact same spot (the big arc is the previous swing), knowing some big weather was on the way. We came from Killarney this morning, sailed and motored, then anchored at about 13:30. 

Just as we were approaching James Bay the air temperature dropped rapidly. There were no other signs of sudden weather change, so we checked water temperature, then noticed the developing mist. We were used to low twenties, but the water we were in was showing 16.8C. We grabbed warmer clothes and watched as the water temperatures dropped and dropped. The lowest readings we saw on the way in were 11.7C right in the bay (see the pic above). We have never seen anything like it and were watching for icebergs or the Kraken through the mist. Some kind of upwelling? Need to learn more. The air temperature was much warmer in the bay, coming off Manitoulin Island, for a while…

There was a squall watch this morning, eventually upgraded to a warning, and we could see the line over Mac Island at noon before we got out of cell range. It looked likely to reach us in some form at about 15:00.

There was a cacophony of alarms by radio and cell starting around 14:30. Apparently they can push out an alarm saying “TORNADO in this mobile coverage area” even when your phone shows no service, and the wording seemed to suggest that there already was an actual tornado. We got eight different cellular tornado warnings between 14:44 and 15:37. I hope nobody got hurt!

At 14:42 the rain hit and the wind rose rapidly. We already had the engine on and were dressed for action. We could monitor conditions and follow GPS position on the instruments at the nav station below. We could see from inside when the BBQ lid blew open and when the flag tried to fly away. (Pulled apart a split ring. ) The drag alarm went off and we watched on the plotter as the boat worked its way 200 ft towards the open lake before stopping again. The max wind speed recorded was 53.9 knots which felt quite exciting. There were extended periods around 40. The stormy part was about 15 minutes. The adrenaline reaction is still ebbing after an hour. 

After the storm the water temp was 10.8 for several hours, but was back up to 19.2 by morning. 

07-22 Bell Cove

We had planned for Sturgeon Cove next door, but it was looking kind of crowded, even at 2 PM.

07-21 South Benjamin Island

We went north of Fox and east of Croker, partly for reconnaissance and partly to avoid the really narrow channel between North and South Benjamin. You wouldn’t want to meet another boat going the other way!

The anchorage was fairly full when we arrived at noon and had filled further, but the views are lovely. 

We took the dinghy for a circumnavigation of the island. We waded in a sandy cove on the south end and the narrow channel was easy in a RIB! Sunset was glorious

Playfair snuck in late, then sailed off her anchor at breakfast time. We took a little longer and used the diesel.

07-19 Eagle Island

We came in from the north east, about half way between the small island and the round shallow spot south of it. We had tried the bottom end of South Benjamin on the way, but it was parked up. 

It was a rainy afternoon and evening, but cleared enough for a beautiful moon in the wee hours. We had a lovely piece of whitefish cooked in the oven, so I didn’t have to BBQ in the rain — such luxury!

on the way out we went north of the small island, closer to shore and that worked too. People seemed to be coming and going every which way.

07-18 Gore Bay

There’s now a break wall extending almost out to the red mark.

We did a huge grocery shopping and the cashier allowed as how it might be OK to take the cart to the harbour as long as I brought it back. Judging by the collection of carts at the marina, I was one of the few reliable souls 😉

CYC has a well stocked marine store, including smoked and frozen local fish. Quite a few boats anchor out in the bay for free and there are signs in the bathrooms reminding them the showers (8/10) are for moored bots only!

The octagonal restaurant is still there, but is now Purvis Fish and Chips (est 2021), not the old place where we had a wonderful meal with Mary and Ralph and Marjorie back in 2012.

07-16 Milford Haven, St Joseph’s Island

The forecast was 20 knots from the northish, so this narrow bay seemed a good pick. There was another sailboat much further up and our holding was good down here. Trees all around meant we saw only about 10 when it was blowing 20.

We took the longer, but Canadian, Lake George route on the way down. There seem to be a lot of float planes just out of the Soo on the Canadian side. These guys had two at the same dock!

The channel isn’t as narrow as it looks and I never saw less than 12 feet.

Back out in the shipping channel the scale is much bigger.

07-17 Vidal Island

We tried further west and found a rocky bottom that the anchor skipped along the top of. Amazing how clear the sound is coming up the all chain rode. This spot grabbed much better!

We started the day on a 60 degree reach in 20 knots with genny alone and finished with the main out, 110 degrees and less than 15 knots. A great sail, but cold in a north wind. Tonight’s low is forecast at 9C!

At least the rain stopped by noon, yielding to sunny blue skies by the time we got here.

07-15 Back in the Soo

Coming down the lock was as easy as going up and a little faster. Which is good because beating into 20 knots is hard work on any boat. We decided trying to tack up the shipping channel was a bad plan, especially given the hard edges in places. Downtown Sault Ste Marie is pretty noisy after Batchawana Bay!

That sudden colour change is the difference between 30 feet and 3 feet, so we motored up the channel.

07-13 Batchawana Bay

We are in Harmony Bay, a subsection of Batchawana Bay, which opens off Whitefish Bay, one small corner of Lake Superior. It’s not intuitively obvious what the scale is just from looking at the chart and that makes it worth a visit all by itself. The water is a surprisingly warm 24 degrees in this little bay, so swimming was not such a daring move.

We are about 1/3 of a mile offshore in 20 feet of water on a sandy bottom. We tried to dinghy closer but it was about 2’ deep by the time we were half way there. The smoky hills rising above highway 17 look a lot farther away than they are. It was thick enough we pulled out the masks on the way here.

We were followed out of the Soo by the Algoma Discovery. Jamie says “Yes definitely be careful! They're surprisingly fast for being a bathtub filled with rocks”

A little reading makes it clear you need Jerry cans of fuel to venture further into Superior.