Tuesday August 9, 2016
Bass Islands Put-in Bay

We've been heading south through Lake Huron, St Clair River, lake St Clair, the Detroit River and Lake Erie. We now find ourselves at Put-in Bay and are going to stay put for a day or 2.
We stopped at Port Huron on Sunday night. Got in just after the races and joined the club in hamburgs, Cole slaw, corn on the cob and cake. PHYC is a self made, self run club and everyone there will be happy to tell you about it. They have done a fantastic job of it. It's wild to see anyone walk behind the bar and help themselves to a drink and pay the till.
Monday we spent the night at Keanes Marina In Detroit. It is a big but quiet establishment with a pool and tiki bar and mostly older power boats. Sinbads is right across the canal and they will come and get you. No one recommends walking as the neighborhood is dicy. The Marina is the most secure place I have ever seen. Sinbads is a pretty high class place. The food was really good and we got to watch the olympics. We thought it was going to be a dive and were pleasantly surprised.

It was a long, windy, cloudy/sunny day down to Put-in Bay. We jumped into 83 degrees water when we got here. It was like bath water compared to the north channel. Tomorrow we will catch the bum boat and go into town for the day.

Saturday August 6, 2016
Bayfield, Ontario

Woke up to a cool, dry day in Kincardine after sitting out a day there yesterday. Weather had called for lots of thunderstorms and wind was on the nose. So we chilled (or should I say sweated) for a day. Went to a bar to watch olympics for a while.

Met some folks yesterday who were going down our way. Seems he was good friends through work with people bob met in grad school and had belonged to RYC. It's a small world. Anyway, Had a race but they beat us out of the gate and stayed way out in the lake so could sail the whole way. We had to turn on the motor when we went below 4 knots. They beat us by a half hour. Had a good laugh over it all.

Tomorrow is supposed to be another good day, so we are going down to Sarnia.

Thursday August 4, 2016

We left Tobermory Wednesday and crawled carefully into the Fishing Islands where Fred Becker has his 3 generations camp. He met us at the bouys and led us in. We anchored behind Smokehouse Island and he took us in on his huge metal run-a-bout. It's really a cute (but rustic) camp. He and Ginny have done a lot to clean it up and have made some upgrades. Fred put in solar power as he needed electricity for a medical device. Still no running water or electric lights. An outhouse is down the path so I guess you get the idea. We had chicken cooked in cast iron on an ancient propane stove. Helens famous whitefish recipe was hanging in the kitchen. A self portrait of Helen's father hung on the wall. A very interesting place.

Fred returned us to our boat before dusk and we arranged to meet him for breakfast in the morning.

Croissants highlighted our breakfast of eggs, grits, and watermelon. At 8:30 we took off for Kincardine.

We arrived here about 2:30. What a great little town! We heard a string quartets at a gazebo in town as part of the summer music festival. They were great musicians but all the songs were in French! I thought we were in Quebec.

Tomorrow is supposed to be windy but we might actually be able to sail. We are headed to Goderich.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Tobermory

Cell service returns to us. My conclusion is that the North Channel has pretty good cell service, all things considering, and the Georgian Bay has very little cell service, at least on the south side.

Sunday we motored in cloudy, dark, on the nose wind to a harbor at Club Island. Only one other sailboat in the bay. We were too busy to notice much else as Otto, our auto-pilot decided to die on us on the way there. Bob emptied the aft locker and got the instrument out after a lot of work (and in the rain). He took Otto apart to check the brushes which in reading the manual was the most likely problem. No dice. Brushes were fine. He cleaned the whole thing out and put it back in position. Didn't work. His clothes, hands and face were black from the ordeal.
We finally had dinner and went to bed.
Monday we woke up to a cloudy day, but it cleared up to a sparkling blue sky. Motored to Cabot's Head, the other big point on the Bruce Peninsula. Water was clear as a bell! We took dinghy to explore an partially submerged wreck, then took a short walk to the light house which was made into a small museum. It was pretty interesting but hot. A short motor back to the boat and we were in the water snorkeling around. The swim felt sooooo good. I'm getting used to cold water. I think it was 70 degrees there.
This morning we discovered a million tiny fly type creatures all over our boat, in the dinghy, and in the spider webs (which have been many this whole trip!). We saw no signs of spiders eating them, though!
We got out of there fast and went to a grotto on the way up the Bruce Peninsula from Cabot's Head. We saw where we figured it was. We could motor VERY close to shore and it was 200 feet deep. We saw an occasional person and interesting cliffs but no grotto. All of a sudden it appeared along with 100's of people who had hiked there. There were 2 bouts for commercial dive boats and we took one. A short time later we were in the cold cold water (69) with our masks and snorkels. It just took us a minute to swim to shore and look in the grotto. Bobby went in, but it was really slippery so I did not. I could see everything from where I was anyway. Then we snorkeled along the steep cliffs of the shore line. It was fascinating. A dive boat showed up and people were diving along the bottom. It was lots of fun! Eventually we got cold and went back to the boat and motored around the tip of the Bruce Peninsula to refuel and reprovision.

Saturday, July 30, 2016
Croker island

Yesterday we motored out of John island and east on the North Channel back to the Benjamin's and curled our way around the rocks into Croaker island far up the bay. There we found a great little cove with 4 boats in it, with tall rocks all around. We took the dinghy to shore and hiked up the rocks. Fantastic view! Then we climbed down, went back to the boat and had a fabulous swim in 73 degree water.
Dinner was followed by a bottle of wine provided by Nickel Bonus, the sailboat next to us. Croker island is so beautiful, and this cove at the end so small it can have a very limited number of boats. Really, this is my favorite anchorage so far.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Johns island

We woke up (if we ever went to sleep) to a cloudy morning. No-see-ums kept biting us all night at our little cove on Oak Bay. As scenic as it was, it probably wasn't a great choice for an anchorage. Also, no skinny dipping as a boat came an anchored right on top of us.

The day cleared and we had a lovely, slow sail through some very scenic territory. The first was going through the very narrow channel at Little Detroit, the narrowest cut in the North Channel. Quite interesting maneuvering our way through there!

That brought us out on to the Whales back. Lots of rocks, beautiful area. From there we entered the channel between Johns island and Deweney island. Interesting getting into this channel. Went for a great cold swim, did laundry and took a nap! Bob grilled steaks for dinner. Great day!