North Channel

         We have spent a wonderful week exploring the North Channel.  From Mary Ann Cove we went through the swing bridge to Port of Little Current, a cute little town on Manitoulin Island, the big island that divides the North Channel from Lake Huron.  The bridge is an old railroad bridge converted to a one-way motor vehicle bridge which opens only on the hour, so fifteen to twenty minutes prior boats begin to gather and hover.  There is a wonderful town-run marina, where boats can dock for a few hours for free or stay overnight for a very reasonable fee.  VHF Channel 68 was very busy with traffic from the hovering boats requesting dock space on the other side of the bridge.  We joined the radio queue, looking for a few hours’ tie-up so we could run into town for some groceries.  How those dockhands kept us all straight is a mystery, but kudos to them for handling the chaotic arrivals as smoothly as they do, every hour.  Within fifteen minutes of passing through the bridge we were tied up at the seawall.

The Port of Little Current offered everything a cruiser needs within walking distance.  We got our supplies and had a little time to browse the shops and visit with some fellow cruisers before we took off for a nearby anchorage at East Rous Island.  

The North Channel is just as scenic as Georgian Bay and offers just as many anchorages.  From East Rous we moved to Croker Island in Baie Fine, a lovely little place where we met an older couple on a sailboat from Michigan.  Bob and Mary had lots of advice for us about where to go and what not to miss.  They’ve been sailing these waters for thirty years.  From there we moved over to Moiles Harbour, choosing that one because one of the reviews said they’d seen a bear swimming.  

We didn’t see any bears, but we did have some drama.  The anchor didn’t set well.  Dan wasn’t pleased, but decided that since there wasn’t any current, and we were protected from all directions of wind (and there’s no tide to worry about!) we would be ok.  In the morning, as we raised anchor, we found why it didn’t set:  we’d snagged a dead head.  Not only had we snagged it, we’d swung around and neatly wrapped our chain around the fifteen foot log.  Fortunately conditions were still and calm; all we had to do was poke at it and wait, and the log swung around enough for the chain to unwrap.  We discovered the area was a logging site and dead heads were not uncommon.  Good to know.

Bear Drop Harbour

        Our next anchorage was in the picturesque (in name and surroundings) harbour known as Bear Drop.  We arranged to meet up with our cruising friends Meg and Dave on Circle Lily there, and they invited us aboard for dinner that evening.  After we each spent an hour or so gunkholing around the long, narrow harbor, Dan dropped me off to cook up a blueberry crisp for the night’s dessert while he went ashore to gather replacement berries.  We had a veritable feast aboard Circle Lily - Meg and Dave served fondue as an appetizer and steak and potatoes for the main course and came up with cream to drizzle over the blueberry crisp.  Outstanding!  

Coincidentally, some Canadian friends we’d met seven years ago in the Bahamas just happened to be anchored behind us in Bear Drop Harbour.  We had cruised in company in the Exumas with Bruce and Jo of Solana, but haven’t seen them since 2016.  We invited them over the next morning for blueberry pancakes and had a great time catching up.  

Bruce, Jo, Kathy, & Dan 

        We spent last night anchored in the Turnbull Islands and tonight we are in Anderson Bay, in St. Joseph’s Channel, which leads to Sault Ste. Marie.  Our plan is to dip our keel in Lake Superior before heading back southwest to Lake Michigan.  That way we can say we’ll have been in all five of the Great Lakes.  (We briefly traveled in Lake Erie back in 2018 when we brought Willie Dawes from Grand Isle, NY to Maine.)  This will be our last night in Canadian waters - we’ll check back into the US tomorrow in Sault Ste. Marie.  

Turnbull Islands

Tommie took over the First Mate chair today when I went below for a minute…

Georgian Bay to the North Channel

     

        We spent the next five nights - Tuesday, July 18 through Saturday July 22 - in Georgian Bay.  I’ve said previously that cruising in Nova Scotia is like cruising in a painting, and this Bay is no exception.  It was stunning scenery, and we were lucky to have really nice weather most of the time.  For those of you hoping to come to this area, our anchorages were off Bass Island, Sandy Bay East, in the Bustard Islands between Tie and Strawberry Island, the Bad River Channel and off Key Hole Island.  

Each place was unique, and we were not alone in most of them.  The anchorage in the Bustard Islands was particularly busy.  In that one we were one of three boats anchored by itself - all the others were rafted together.  Directly across from us was a raft of twelve!  We think this is a sort of marina without docks.

It is common here to back up to the shore, drop anchor, and then run a line to shore to tie to a tree.  In some of the anchorages there are even cleats or rings embedded in the rock wall; we’ve not used these, but we have seen others tie up to shore that way.  

In the Bad River Channel we took the dinghy around to explore the many other smaller channels, some of which offered some rapids around the ledges and small islands. 

Bad River Channel gunkholing

We met some folks in another dinghy - who also came from Maine! - who mentioned the abundance of wild blueberries.  Dan spent a few hours ashore gathering a couple of containers’ worth.  

Another thing worth mentioning are the many beaver lodges.  They seem to be in every anchorage and most rivers.  In our Bass Island anchorage we were treated to beavers swimming all around us as dusk came on.  Beavers are nocturnal, and they really are very busy - there were three of them just swimming back and forth, back and forth.   

Fuzzy beaver picture.

        

        We left Georgian Bay on Sunday morning and officially entered the North Channel.  There are several ‘entrances’ - we went through the narrow Killarney Channel, past the small town of Killarney and on into the waters that open into the North Channel.  We cruised up into the Baie Fine and settled into Mary Ann Cove, partly because there was room and partly because there was a hike to the peak of the small mountain that overlooks the cove. The hike takes you up to the quartz peak for a fine view.  Full disclosure - we didn’t make the actual peak - we couldn’t find the trail head and did some bushwhacking until we disturbed some yellow jackets and I got stung on both legs.  We did find a peak, some feet below the real peak, and that did give us a satisfying view.  We were preparing to make our way back down when we literally stumbled onto the real trail and took that way back down.  Much easier than bushwhacking!  

Tommie resting on the tonneau cover on the flying bridge.  Sometimes after a day of cruising she is just worn out.  

Into Georgian Bay

         Friday (July 14) we accomplished everything we wanted to do: all the big laundry, stepping the mast, some more provisioning, using the WiFi system there to update our computer systems and Navionics charts…  We even bought a pizza and cooked it in the marina’s kitchen.  (We haven’t had pizza in a long time.)  Lynn and Pat - the area’s harbor hosts - came for a visit, bringing with them some packages we’d had delivered to their address.  They have years of experience cruising and sailing these waters and spent a good hour going over the charts with Dan, showing him nice anchorages and what places to avoid.  Nothing beats local knowledge or the hospitality of harbor hosts!  

Saturday we moved back over to the dock at the Port Severn Lock.  Here we met another local couple who were also full of information about where to anchor.  Since there was no power on this or nearby docks, Dan donned his wetsuit and jumped in to replace our zinc anodes with aluminum ones.  Zinc works best in salt water, aluminum or magnesium are better for fresh water.  A large bass came up to supervise, hovering closely to make sure the work was done correctly.  The water was clear, but I couldn’t get a picture of it.  Once that chore was done, we decided to go ahead and finish the Trent-Severn.  We locked through shortly after and soon found ourselves in the entrance to Georgian Bay. 

    We cruised through Potato Channel, which may have been named for nearby Potato Island, and got our first look at the many, many rocks and tiny rocky islands that make up the section called Thirty Thousand Islands.  You could spend years here and still not see everything!  It’s reminiscent of Penobscot Bay in Maine, except with a lot more islands, no tides, and no lobster pots.  We cruised past many little summer homes perched on rocks, while small boats zipped by us on either side. 

        Beausoleil Island is a favorite first stopping point for people entering Georgian Bay, and one of the first places you come across is Picnic Island, which is basically a building on a rock that offers groceries from fresh produce to a butcher shop.  The only way to get to it is by boat.  We didn’t stop, as we had already shopped in Port Severn.  We continued up to the top of Beausoleil Island and entered a small basin called Frying Pan Bay for the night.  Several other boats were already in there, and they call kept a close watch on us as we anchored in our own spot.  One individual came paddling over on his SUP and immediately began advising Dan about US politics.  He was a Canadian citizen, emigrated from the old Soviet Union, and he had strong opinions on the direction of the US and what we should be doing about it.  His parting words to Dan were “America is a great country.  Don’t screw it up.”  As I have said before, Dan is a people magnet, especially drawing in the outspoken ones.  

Sunday we left Frying Pan Bay and continued our navigation through narrow, twisting channels toward Parry Sound, which is another destination for most newbies to Georgian Bay.  We didn’t quite get to the Sound itself, but found a lovely little nook of an anchorage in Menominee Channel.  We had tried anchoring in an unmarked anchorage, but quickly found out why there was no anchor symbol marking that spot on the chart - it was all ledge on the bottom, no mud for the anchor to grab into.  Menominee Channel had nice thick mud, as our anchor hauling demonstrated this morning.

Today (Monday July 17) the winds have sprung up from the West, making Parry Sound and points west a little snotty, so our cruise today was very short.  We found our way into a small, protected channel on the south side of Parry Sound and dropped the anchor around noon.  It’s a good day for boat projects.  

Tommie mugging for the camera.

The end of the Trent-Severn Canal

         What a journey this has been!  Nearly 300 miles of canals, rivers, and lakes, and forty-five locks.  We actually haven’t been through the last lock here at Port Severn, but we are here on the seawall at the lock (Thursday night July 13, Friday am) and will plan to go through it on Saturday morning and on into Georgian Bay.  Tonight we’ll spend at a nearby marina and take care of the laundry, mast-stepping, and other preps to get ready for cruising the Great Lakes.

We crossed Lake Simcoe on Monday, July 10, and found a nice quiet anchorage in Lake Couchiching, beyond the little town of Orillia.  Dan spent some time washing and waxing the hull and making sure the prop and bow thrusters were clear of weeds.  It’s been very weedy here; the waters are filled with long long strands of grassy stuff that easily wrap them selves around the propellor.  But the water itself is remarkably clear and warm for swimming!  

Tuesday we arrived at Swift Rapids, the tallest regular lock in the Canadian canal systems.  We had a drop of 49 feet that went quite quickly.  The locktenders were nice enough to allow Dan time to set up our Go-Pro camera on the rail to film our descent.  I would have attached it here, but Blogspot doesn’t accept large video files.  (Look for the debut of our YouTube channel…) Once through the lock, we took a place at the seawall to spend the night.  

Wednesday we took our time, anchoring for a bit in the mouth of the Lost Channel to explore by dinghy some beautiful little passageways with shores dotted by camps and cottages, and then we pushed on to the Big Chute. 

Lost Passage

        This is an incredible feat of engineering - a marine railway that portages boats over a road and down the hill from the Severn River into the Gloucester pool. 

When we arrived just before noon, there were already three boats ahead of us waiting for their turn on the cradle, which can handle only two boats of our size at a time, just one if they are also taking smaller watercraft, or only one boat if it is 60 feet long.  We quickly got to know everyone on the waiting boats, exchanging boat cards and promises to take pictures and videos for them if they’d do the same for us. 

We ended up being in the third ‘lockage’ (they call it a lock, even though it’s not), in the front of the cradle ahead of the trawler Tyche.  The whole trip was only about seven minutes long, but what an experience! 

        We immediately took up a place at the dock at the foot of the railway and climbed up the hill to  watch and photograph other boats going through.  One of them - Happy Trails - wasn’t planning on coming through until the morning, so we stayed the night there to film them as they had done for us.  Once all of our new friends had gotten through the Big Chute, we all traveled on to the next and last lock here at Port Severn to take up all the available space there, share our photos, and celebrate our entire cruise on the Trent-Severn at the nearby restaurants.  

Happy Trails on the Big Chute

Water control - closed sluice & open sluice.

We were lucky to have had a beautiful day for our Big Chute experience on Wednesday.  Thursday dawned stormy and windy, and other boats had to navigate a strong current caused by automatic sluice gates opening to spill the excess water down the rapids.  (The locktenders timed the use of the marine railway with the water-control, to mitigate cruisers trouble with the current.)  But the current was also a factor as we all moved on to the next lock.  There were some very narrow spots with blind curves we had to navigate with that current and wind shoving us along.  Again there were rocky outcroppings and tree stumps to watch out for, and we crept along keeping well within the nav buoys that were bouncing around. 

It was bit of a relief to come to the end of the waterway at Port Severn.  We are looking forward to a whole new chapter of our journey as we move on into Georgian Bay and Lake Huron.  

Tommie holding down the bow fly so it doesn't get away.

Almost to Lake SImcoe

   We have been on this canal for nine days now.  We’ve gone through 39 locks (they are numbered 41, but they eliminated two of them during remodelings over the years and didn’t renumber them) and Dan calculated we were lifted well over 600 feet.  We’ve docked at seawalls and we’ve anchored in the lakes.  We moved from sedimentary geology to granite.  The scenery has been spectacular, from marshy wetlands to narrow channels reminiscent of the Dismal Swamp (but with northern firs) to large man-made lakes dotted with small rocky islands.  When we left Katchewanooka (the correct spelling here) Lake, we passed through the two locks at Burleigh Falls and Lovesick and anchored in Deer Bay of Lower Buckhorn Lake for the night.  This was the night thunderstorms were supposed to roll through.  Though they did rumble around us, they only gave us about twenty minutes of passing rain.  

On Friday (July 7) we passed through Buckhorn lock (#31) and on through Bobcaygeon (lock #32) and tied off at the seawall there to stretch our legs and make a grocery run before moving on to anchor in Sturgeon Lake for the night.  With the weekend beginning and the small local boats about already taking advantage of the beautiful weather, we were hoping to find places to ourselves.  It seemed funny to realize that only the fisherman were anchoring - everyone else was partying at the seawalls around the locks.

Saturday we got to Fenelon Falls (lock #34 - #33 is on a side waterway from Sturgeon Lake to Lake Scugog) and again stopped for a stretch and a walk around.  We found a Canadian Tire and picked up a new water jug as well as a few other things, and made a second grocery store run, this time for a pint of ice cream for lunch and a few other things we’d not found yesterday.  The seawalls at Fenelon Falls fill up fast, and people hover hoping for an opening, so we moved on to give someone a slot.  As usual, we had no hard and fast plans.  We knew the Kirkfield hydraulic lift lock was ahead but we weren’t particularly in a hurry to get to it. Then we found out it’s been half-broken since last summer.  Only one side of the lift is operational, so it is unable to utilized the two halves as counterbalances to be able to lift boats on one side while lowering boats on the other as the Peterborough Lift Lock does.  Thus it takes an hour to slowly lift boats and about twenty minutes to slowly lower boats.  We decided to head right to the lift to either get through on Saturday or to be first in line for Sunday.  We left Fenelon Falls, traveled through Rosedale Lock (#35) across the shallow but pretty Balsam Lake and entered the narrowest part of this canal system we’ve encountered. 

At the entrance there is a sign asking boats to give a security call to warn other boaters of their passage.  Each side of this canal was lined with rocky ledges and the guidebook warns to stay in the middle and not stray.   In the middle of this canal a marshy section opens onto a small man-made lake filled with tree stumps. 

Deadheads are common in this part of the waterway, both from the flooding of forested land to make the waterway and from the logging operations that made use of the earliest versions of this canal system.  Needless to say, we took it all very seriously and traveled slowly.  

We arrived at the Kirkfield Lift Lock fully intending to stay the night.  We were the fifth of six boats.  While tied up, we talked with the couple in the boat behind us, people from Syracuse traveling on Remedy - who were members of the same yacht club in Henderson Harbor that my Aunt Thelma had presided over as the first female Commodore.  When I mentioned her name, they said “Not Thelma Schneider!”  Turns out they had been friends for years, both in Syracuse and Henderson Harbor.  Small world!

The same people who had told us about the current operations of this lock informed us that a large passenger cruise boat was headed this way to spend the night here and it would have priority over the first lockage in the morning.  We debated… go through this lock tonight as part of the last lockage or wait until mid to late morning for the next lockage available to us?  We decided to join the other vessels and lock down. 

Six of us in this lock made for very tight quarters, especially since the boats in the front of the lock wouldn’t move as far forward as possible.  We ended up being in the middle of the three on the starboard side, and fending off the bow of Remedy while allowing them to nose up over our swim platform and through our stern gate.  The locktenders bend over backwards to be nice to the boaters, but in cases like this one they should have been a little more in control of which boat was placed where and in what order.  Had the six of us been placed in a different order, we would have all fit in without anyone having to worry.  All six of us spent the night at the seawall below the lock, while the big cruise ship had the upper seawall all to itself.

This morning, (Sunday July 9) we left Kirkfield as soon as it began the operation of lowering that cruise ship.  We had a short run through five locks before reaching Lake Simcoe, the largest lake in Ontario.  We are locking down, now, but we won’t make up for the 600+ feet of lift - we only need to be at the same level of Lake Huron.  We reached the entrance to Lake Simcoe about 1:00 pm and decided, this being the weekend and all, to just stay here for the rest of today and tonight, and travel the lake in the morning, when the recreational traffic will be less.  It’s pretty and peaceful here.

Tommie asleep on helm watch…