Mike -Another beautiful day
08/01/2007, Boyle Harbor, Frazer Bay

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.

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Kathy
08/01/2007, Eagle Island

We left Gore Bay with hopes of sailing, but the wind died and we motored on flat, calm water to Eagle Island, only 16 miles away. We arrived around noon, had lunch and then had kind of a lazy day, mostly reading. I did start a second layer of wax in the cockpit. We'd like to get at least three coats on to keep it looking nice. It was really hot, so I worked in the shady spot where there was a nice breeze. We had a delicious dinner of steak, broccoli, cucumbers and onions in sour cream, roasted Manitoulin Island garlic and bread.

There is a large harbor here and we can see other islands and the La Cloche Mountain Range in the distance. We might not actually call these mountains, but the Canadians do. The shore of this island, like many others, is wooded and rocky. We did not go to shore and explore, but Mike did try fishing. He caught some small-mouth bass and threw them back. I guess this was a pretty uneventful day!

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Mike
07/29/2007, Gore BayM

After running a few more errands, we got out of the slip here in Gore Bay at about 10 am and moved over to the service dock to top off our fuel tank and pump out our holding tank. We decided to stay in the area one more day to take part in their community festival which consisted of an all day concert (and all night) and a fish fry. Also some friends for A-Dock (Crosswinds Marina) are renting boats here for a week or so and we hope to say hi to them before they take off tomorrow. After anchoring in the bay and listening to the concert for awhile we took the dingy to the store and walked to town.

The fish fry was excellent and the music was exceptionally good for being in the middle of nowhere.

After dinner we found our friends.... Chatted with Pat, Joann, Rick, Lynn, and Bev then spent a little time harassing John while he was attempting to load up their boat. On the way back to the boat we stopped at "Startin' Monday" , a boat identical to ours, for a couple of glasses of wine with our new friends Tom and Carol.

Tomorrow we are heading north and will begin working our way east next week toward Little Current, Bay Fine and Kilarney . By talking to folks here we have learned about some great anchorages to the east and in the northern portion of the Georgian Bay.

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