Kathy
07/28/2007, Gore Bay

We spent another day in Gore Bay. We went out for lunch for Mike's birthday to the Rocky Raccoon Café, where they have Indian food. It was very good. They didn't have peach pie, but Mike had pecan pie with homemade ice cream. It was served so nicely I wished I'd had the camera to take a picture. We went to the farmer's market, which was more of a craft show, where we bought some garlic. We also went to the grocery store.

We spent much of the morning meeting and talking to people. We talked to the people on the boat like ours with the green stripe, "Celtic Song", before they left. Bernie and Jeanna from "Das Boot", a 47 foot Vagabond came in and talked to us. They are from Muskegon. They told us about the farmer's market and the Manitoulin Island garlic-best they ever tasted, which is why we had to buy some. Then Tom and Carol from the boat like ours exactly, "Startin' Monday" came over and we chatted with them. We also went out to their boat later and then met up with them on shore. They are from Bayfield, Ontario where these boats were built.

The Mackinaw to Manitoulin to Little Current ended here yesterday, so the place was hopping! They are just leaving to finish the second leg of the race (to Little Current) now. Mike has taken the dinghy out to watch the start.

There is supposed to be entertainment here today for the festival, so we'll see what goes on. If the internet time we paid for ends, this will be our last posting for a day or two at least.

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Kathy
07/27/2007, Gore Bay

Here we are in Gore Bay again. We got a slip today and were parked next to a couple that had to be in their 80's on an old sail boat that could almost be termed a tall ship. Mike says it was a 39 foot boat, with a 12 foot bow pulpit (so, technically 51feet long). It was gaff rigged (look it up) and had 4 sails. They were having something fixed and left after it was done. We wonder if they bought it new?

We did lots of walking today. We went to town and back several times, and brought the camera once and walked on the boardwalk to a little lookout platform that was very shaky, (Mike says worse than any deer hunting platform he ever had). We took some pictures of the bay and may post some, but we haven't looked at them yet. We are two boats away from "Celtic Song", another Bayfield 40 that we passed while traveling several day ago. On the way home from town once, I noticed that we were anchored in the harbor!! It was actually another Bayfield 40 in the same colors as our boat. In our 4 ½ summers on this boat, we have only seen one other boat like ours, only with a green stripe like "Celtic Song", so it is strange for us to be in the same harbor with 2.

Gore Bay is a smallish town, but has just about everything one needs. There are a couple of hardware stores, a decent grocery store that allows you to bring their carts to the marina, some drug stores, a laundromat, and a couple of clothing and art stores. It is not far to walk from the marina, or when we were anchored out we just pulled up to shore in the marina area. There is a festival here this weekend, maybe we'll stick around, or maybe we'll head out.

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Mike
07/27/2007, Aird Island Harbor 7/25/07

As expected, we stayed anchored at Aird Island another day. After a few cups of coffee I retrieved the sander from below the lower drawer of Kathy's dresser and began the task of resurfacing the fiberglass in our cockpit. It has always be oxidized to the point that that it always looked dull and has been difficult to keep clean. The process took most of the remainder of the day, but the results are well worth the time and energy. We also put some grommets in the shade extensions that Kathy has been sewing together.

In the late afternoon two boats joined us here. Now realize that we are not located in a designated anchorage, we just pulled over and threw out the hook. There are hundreds of thousands of places to anchor here and it amazes me that folks would park on top of us. A little later a third boat "Monkey's Orphan" stopped and asked permission to anchor as well. We have met these folks before, both at South Manitou Island, at Beaver Island, and in Gore Bay, and they seem to be fun. They are traveling with their one year old daughter and a niece. Most importantly, I begged some flour to fry walleye.

After a wonderful fish dinner, we headed back to see if we could catch a few more. It was slow going , but just at dusk as the mosquitoes began to be a problem, they started hitting. We ended up with three more nice walleyes in the refrigerator.

We ran out of water (in our tank) and are going to run back to Gore Bay today to refill. Our tank has a capacity of 100 gallons and there is a gauge, but it is not working at the moment. I think I've found my next rainy day project.

Although not a problem at this point, we are certainly going to have to be more frugal with out water consumption in the future.

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