7/30/07 Eagle Island to Boyle Harbor.

We woke up this morning to another perfect day. We had two destinations in mind, Oak Bay and Little Current. The entrance to Oak Bay was only about 3 miles to the north while Little Current was in the neighborhood of 20. Over coffee, we fired up Ken's program on the computer, pulled out some maps and guide books and tried to figure out when we needed to get serious about heading toward the East Coast. Our best guess is that we're ok but need to step things up a bit. We headed for Little Current at about 10 a.m. with no wind again. Navigating here is always fun... many times the shortest route is not the best.

Little Curraet is a small town where Manitoulin Island meets the mainland. We were going to stop at the government dock which is just a wall where boats tie up, but things were crowded and congested so we just kept going. There is a swing bridge that opens on the hour and we only waited about five minutes to get through.

Kathy set a course to the east where there were at least three good anchorages and we were on our way . A nice breeze kicked up so we quickly got the sails up for the remaining 10 miles. We ended up stopping in Boyle Harbor, which was a beautiful spot. We took the dinghy around to check for fish and just to have a look around. There are tow other boats here. We have two destinations in mind for tomorrow and are well staged for which ever we decide in the morning.

The rocks and cliffs here are white, which is a change from the pinkish-grey to the west. There were some great thunderstorms rolling through to the west of us this evening but it barely sprinkled in our cove.

One of the things that is interesting up here is listening to the VHF radio. The North Channel is small enough that people can talk to each other almost anywhere... and they do. Some people talk all the time and we find ourselves giving them personalities and appearances even though all we know them by is what they say on the radio. It is easy to tell sail boaters from power boaters and you can usually come up with a reasonably good guess at the size of their boats. Some people travel in packs... and after a few days we know which boats belong to which pack, where they're going and what's for supper.

Because of this almost constant idle chatter, the other 50% of the boaters up here remain silent.