Georgian Bay Conquered....now, The North Channel!

Midland to Little Current, Canada (Georgian Bay)

Why do Canadian bar singers insist on Gordon Lightfoot?   I know, he’s a native – but so are the infinitely more interesting Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and I’m not hearing much of them. 

Saturday morning (7/13), Bob Baer arrived after driving from NYC (he spent the night in Toronto).  We were off within the hour for our first true cruise into the Georgian Bay.  It was a picture perfect Saturday, so we were joined by many more boats than we are used to seeing – but there’s a lot of water for a crowd.  The scenery was the 30,000 Islands – all granite outcroppings of various shapes and sizes.  These are covered with pine trees and the occasional cottage.  The small craft channel had some really narrow areas with careful turns, plenty of navigational and piloting challenges – but we pulled it off without a hitch and pretty minimal anxiety. 

We arrived at our destination early in the afternoon – Henry’s Fish Restaurant.  This is a fairly famous (we probably saw a dozen seaplanes land and take off – coming in for their Henry’s fix) but totally casual joint with overnight dockage for diners.  We enjoyed the food, but it was clearly secondary to the amazing setting.  We did the routine, sunset and cocktails on another boater's vessel, on our own bow, Bananagrams and Maneuvers card game (introduced both of these to Bob) until bedtime.  

Wake up, repeat.  The second day of the Georgian Bay was every bit as beautiful – somewhat more remote and fewer boats.  We even stopped for Bob and I to take a quick swim off the back of the boat.  Six hours later we arrived at our marina near Britt.  Today we had a couple of minor repairs, email, bocce ball, bike ride to town, and are waiting for a nearby restaurant to come pick us up to bring us for dinner.  It’s neither common nor unusual for local stores and restaurants to provide such services.   On occasion, we go to buy groceries and then ride our bikes back to the boat to meet the delivery car.

After a couple of days in Britt, we moved on to Killarney, which sits as the most western point of the Georgian Bay, and the most eastern point of the North Channel.  We had planned a one day stop, but were taken by the old school lodge where we were docked.  Quite a few marinas are also lodges/resorts – this being one of them.   60’s style architecture and furniture, swimming pool, shuffle board, lots of knotty pine in the big dining room – think of the Dirty Dancing setting.  And the atypical Canadian heat wave made the pool a refreshing place to hang out.  The octagonal bar had floor to ceiling windows on 6 sides, facing the channel and cliffs across the way.  We watched a local do his version of Gordon Lightfoot in this bar, before moving on to shuffleboard.

Bob experienced the typical arc of a Sea Fever guest (although he is a repeat guest).  First day – not sure how this works and where stuff is (which way is aft?).  Second day – getting the hang of it.  Third day – catching the Sea Fever.  Fourth day – trying to figure out how to add a day or two to the original plan.   Despite this strategizing (found a seaplane option for $1093.00), I walked Bob up to the parking lot Wed. a.m. to say goodbye as he got in the car of the local man he had hired to drive him back to his car.  From there, I walked to the boathouse/office, where an observant woman said, “you just said goodbye to an old friend.”   38 years of friendship,  in fact.  She drilled me for details of our history and relationship in a way I’ve only known Debi to do.   Yes, we met in prison...no, neither of us were inmates.

We did our best to enjoy life without Bob – checked out a very nice photography gallery and bought fish and chips out of a school bus converted into a kitchen.  There were only two items on the menu – fish….and chips.   But they were churning them out as fast as they could – the line never stopped - the fish was very delicious and as fresh as it could be since it was caught today.

This morning we had a fairly early departure to Little Current – a short hop from Killarney - but wanted to get to the next stop before a bad
weather front came in.  We made it longer by taking a detour into the famous Baie (Bay) Fine.  Here we experienced fairly steep cliffs coming down to water’s edge on both sides of the relatively narrow and ten mile long bay.

Little Current is pretty much a rocking place – 1,700 people, 3 ATMs and one tattoo parlor!  That’s more than we’ve had since Midland almost a week ago – and more than we will see until we return to the states in northern Michigan sometime late next week.  

Little Current’s hotel, the Anchor Inn, is the site of a daily VHF radio broadcast to all the ships at sea in the Georgian Bay and North Channel - the Cruisers' Net.  Ray Easton runs the pretty folksy little show, and at the end invites all of his listeners to state their locations over their radios – we called in while cruising this morning.   He gives any updates regarding the weather, sea conditions, marina facilities, depths of shallow areas, special events in nearby locales (e.g., art festival here this weekend).  Listeners are invited to call in with their questions (“how deep is the east end of the Collins Inlet these days?”), people transmit messages to others through this medium (cell service is limited), and finally he gives national and international news to those of us who are pretty out of touch with this stuff.  In short, the show helps to connect and create the community that we have joined – one that gains and loses people every day who are making their way through their own adventures.  The marine version of “Don’t forget bridge club at the Elk’s Lodge tomorrow – and Margaret is in town this week visiting her cousin Charlotte, who finally had her baby boy Monday morning.”

So yesterday, we radioed into the show to announce Sea Fever was heading west from Killarney on her way to Little Current.  Today, because this sort of thing rates as exciting in our new frame of reference, we went to the hotel to watch this local version of Prairie Home Companion.    Part of the show is, “This Day in History.”  Turns out that 17 years ago today was the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics in Atlanta.  He acknowledged his two Atlantans in his live audience – and that’s the biggest thing that’s happened to us in awhile.  He also noted on the air, with a bit of disdain, that it took us 14 years to get here (North Channel) and that we are only staying for a week - since locals of course think this area is the best area of the whole Loop (they are probably right).

And that’s the news from Little Current, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking….

Love and miss y'all.
Debi and Jim