[Public-List] Did it at last

[Gordon Laco]

Hello shipmates.

This year Caroline and I finally did the Georgian Bay circumnavigation we’ve been talking about for many years.   The hold up was business… I like what I do and own my own business… so it’s been difficult to get away for more than a few days at a time.   This year we decided not to let another season go by.

We originally planned to do the trip in August, but we had a 40' container of goods coming over from Holland by sea, and one thing after another delayed it so we had to keep putting back the voyage.   If any of you heard a heavy thump followed by cheering in August, that was us when the thing and its 16,000 pounds of stuff finally arrived.  We then had to unload the thing rapidly, then filter all that stuff into the shelving in the warehouse.  Phew… finally got it done… then shipped literally tons of stuff right back out to fill orders and back orders.

All that looked after, we set Thursday August 28 to cast off.   We did a big provisioning shopping expedition the night before, followed by another focusing on fresh food and ice the morning of…  both fuel tanks full; holding tank empty, away we went at 1100.

During the day dreaming phase of planning for this trip, I’d always assumed we go around clockwise.  We even considered doing the Georgian Bay Regatta racing series as that would have taken us to the western side of the bay and would have been a good start.  However waiting for the container caused us to miss the four day event, and it did occur to me that since going up the eastern side of the Bay, known as the 30,000 Islands (there are more) usually involves a lot of motoring due to the western trend of the shore and the narrowness of the channels.  So we decided to go counterclockwise.     Sailing in company with us were Fred and Karen aboard Valiant, their Invader 36.   Fred and I were roommates in university five decades ago - we’ve stayed good friends all these years.   He crewed for me aboard Touch Wood and later Surprise;  five years ago I FINALLY got him into his own boat.   And of course I was pleased he chose a type which confirms all my yachting prejudices.   Full keel, was a racing type when it was new (actually Valiant was a very successful yacht back when I was a boy) built in Canada, and dark blue hull.

The first night’s anchorage was Indian Harbour, site of many Misery Trip sojourns but this time quite pleasant.   The second night was up to the Sans Souci region where we came alongside the wharf at our good friends island property.   Third night we went up past Pointe au Baril to an un-named cove we call Birdsong Bay because well because the first time we were there we heard a chorus of different birds all yelling their heads off.  That was more than twenty years ago and well the great great grand children of those birds were still there signing like crazy.

Our next day, Day Four, took us into Byng Inlet and back out Alexander Passage where the otherwise Inside Route goes outside for a while.   We were astonished to see rocks and ledges going by twenty feet beneath us in the crystal clear water.   We were still motoring due to the flat calm.   We knocked off each buoy one after another till later in the afternoon when a bank of fog appeared and then enveloped us.  Fog is rare here, but there it was.  We could no longer see much beyond the bow pulpit… but due to the dead calm piloting was easy.  We took the trouble to dead reckon the old fashioned way on charts but fired up the GPS plotter just in case.    Things got interesting as we neared the Magnetewan Ledges (horrible rock formation which extends about eight miles off shore.  Things got interesting when we noticed there was a set developing as evidenced by a faint wake visible in the buoys, and my apparent steering errors to starboard as we came up to each pin.  Oh dear.  More attention was paid to the GPS.  We kept up our plot on the chart just in case that screen went dark…    

This reminded me of the first time I stood on the bridge of a warship as a naval officer.   That was HMCS SHAWINIGAN off the coast of Newfoundland.   What?! said I.  You trust your lives to THAT?! (pointing contemptuously at the radar interfaced GPS repeater).  Then I laughed and commented ‘I’ll bet a thousand years ago someone pointed to a compass and said the same words’’’ hahaha.

So we reduced speed and continued.   Eventually we came upon a 22’ sailing yacht with a burly figure hunched over in his cockpit… tied to a buoy.   I idled up to him and said ‘good afternoon!’   He barely looked up and grumbled ‘I can’t see a damned thing…’    I replied ‘We’ve got a GPS… want to follow us in?’   He mumbled ‘OK’ and started fumbling with his outboard.   We heard him start up, and saw him cast off the buoy.  I called ‘would five knots be OK?’  He raised a hand and nodded… away we went.   We now had two boats in train, the grumpy guy and our friends in Valiant.

We weaved our way through the invisible perils of the inshore end of the Ledges… the popped into bright blue clear sunlight at the entrance to the Magnetewan River.  Wahoo.   We waved to our rescuee and eased back up to 6 knots.   I commented to Caroline that the guy in the smaller yacht didn’t seem very excited about being rescued… she commented he was probably totally traumatized.  Oh well, I love a rescue anyway.

Up the river we went to a marina at the village of Britt.   We refuelled and pumped out, shopped in the little grocery store then turned in.

Next morning, Day five, we continued north past Henvey Inlet… and wistfully looked at the entrance to another unnamed cove I named Lost Oar Bay back in the ’90’s.  There we were in Touch Wood, my 1947 vintage Folkboat, motoring late in the day.  At a particular point the inside passage went east to a buoy at the apex of a mess of rocks, then hair pinned back west.  The problem was the wind was over 20 knots and building… and the westward limb of the turn was open at its far end to the open bay.  Big waves were rolling in… we found Touch Wood’s outboard was not powerful enough to keep her moving into the waves.  We went back downwind to the pin and hoisted the main… motor sailing now (the course was too tight to sail normally) we found we still could not get out that way.   Back we went to the pin and tried to go back the way we came… and couldn’t get out that way either.   So there we were, in Sandy Bay, embayed.  The wind was increasing and the light was going.  We went back down to the pin and found we were driven past it and couldn’t get back up even to that.  We were being pushed into the apex of the bay.  Oh no.

The chart showed an island on the north side with shelter behind it but no soundings… we kept the boat’s head to the seas and edged over to that side… no good.  The place behind the island was obviously very shallow and besides, the waves were sweeping through it.  On the south side was a nice looking cove, but it also had no soundings.  We edged over to that side, engine going full power and the luffing main assisting… when the narrow entrance was off our port bow, I bore off and cut the motor to idle.  But even with the sheet eased the main took over and we came up to the entrance too fast… oh no (again).  But the unsounded bay was deep and we glided into blessed shelter.  Fantastic.  We snugged TW in with a stern anchor and her bow up to the sloping rocks… had a camp fire and relaxed.  We called the place Lost Oar Bay because we lost an oar out of the dinghy - it had somehow escaped its lashing in the slamming and banging the dink did during the emergency.

Back to the present… we didn’t stop there because we wanted to put more miles behind us and continued up to the mouth of the Key River, then altered course west sailing now toward Dead Island and our destination beyond that.  Dead was called Dead because it is a sacred place where the Ojibwa nation entombed their dead for centuries…. that is until the 1890’s when entrepreneurs from Chicago came up and gathered up the corpses and sold them as ‘Egyptian Mummies’.  Damn them.

Past Dead Island, we continued on to the Bustard Islands… and glided under sail into that magically lovely place.   Imagine my surprise when I saw the VP of my largest client coming by in a motorboat… his family owns property there.

We had a great supper, rowed around in the dinghy, again marvelling at the clarity of the water… and really enjoyed watching various wildlife going about their afternoon routines.

In the morning we hoisted anchor and sailed out ’The Gun Barrel’, yes, that’s the name of the channel exiting the interior of the Bustards.   Once past the lighthouse, we found ourselves bounding along doing 7knots in large waves and a powerful steady south wind.  Wow… how often does one get to reach directly where one is going?  Fantastic.

This was Day Six… we roared, surfed and slide on the large waves westward looking for a large feature called Grondine Rock.  Up it came over the horizon on time, away astern it went in short order.   We came to the outer buoy of Beaverstone Bay around which we needed to to north to enter Collins Inlet.   That would have entailed a gybe but instead of that, we rounded up, tacked and resolved the manoeuvre that way.   Collins is a lovely channel north of Phillip Edward Island with the Island on the south side and the mainland on the north.  Absolutely lovely… later that afternoon we came to a widening of the passage called Mill Lake (I suppose there was a mill there in lumbering days.  We dropped the hook in a lovely place and had supper.

Day Seven, we got underway in a calm, and motored west through Collins past cliffs, many (eight) very well established beaver lodges, and finally neared the western end of Collins Inlet.  As we came near that we saw a flotilla of three kayaks and two canoes.  The canoes each carried two people, a mound of camping gear, and each had a large dog laying up high on top of the mound.  Precarious?  Yup.   

Shortly after we passed the expeiditon, along came a large fast boat loaded with people seated in ranks… they were all elderly and expensively dressed… Caroline and I looked at each other and both said ‘cruise ship!.   We later saw an enormous cruise ship which looked like a huge apartment building laying on its side…. that is where the excursion boat came from.  The boat swept by us dragging a huge wake with the inmates all excitedly taking pictures of us.  Did the kayak and canoe expedition survive the wake?  I suppose so; I saw nothing in the news later...

We sailed past the cruise ship to the light marking the eastern entrance to Killarney… once there we wiggled into a rather confined yacht basin and proceeded webbing Surprise in with eight lines.  Eight!  Yup, there was 45 knots of wind forecast for than night and next day.  and yes it came.   We stayed there two nights.  But there was no hardship with a great pub 40 meters away at the head of the jetty we were on.  One afternoon we went for a stroll… saw an Alberg 20 and met a fellow walking along.  I asked him if he knew who owned the A30… he said he did… then he exclaimed ‘Gord!  I’M WILL!’   Yes, it was Will who is on this list who I’ve corresponded with for some time.  What fun to meet.   We had a great dinner with he and his friends that evening.

Also taking shelter in Killarney was a C&C 30 from our club… the owner told me he’d had a mechanic by to look at his engine and could not make it run.  I came aboard, and using the teaching offered my by friend Clint who owns Midland Imports, and looks after our cars and my boat’s engine, removed the carb on the C&C30’s Atomic 4 and after taking it apart, cleaned it.  The carb was choked with gum and crud.  After rinsing it out, we put it back in… the engine now ran, but roughly.   I looked at the distributor and found the rotor in such bad shape the contact was reduced to melted brass that looked like foam.   I sanded it back to smooth and bright; did the same to the four receiving contacts (they were also in very bad shape) and put it together.  The engine now ran, but a little rough because of course the gap was no longer right… but it ran.  The owner commented that the engine had not been tuned up for the six years he’d owned it.   Wow… A4’s are tough engines.  I wrote a text to Clint thanking him for teaching me how to do what I did for that fellow.

Day Eight… good weather returned and we wriggled back out of the marina and away southbound.  Lonely Island loomed ahead and to port… Manitoulin loomed to starboard… fast sailing in great weather close reaching.   In due course we reached Club Island, a place I’ve always wanted to see.  Club is the site of Club Harbour, which is a flask shaped cove filling the interior of the island… well I suppose I should say hollowing out the interior.   Back before the 1920’s this place was the site of a fishing community which was abandoned each winter, finally abandoned for good with the collapse of commercial fishing on the Bay.   No trace remained that we could see… but wow what a place.   Georgian Bay is notable for pine forests and rocky islands… Club looks like tundra.  There is no granite bare bones of the planet as elsewhere… rather the whole place is one great mound of crushed limestone deposited after the last ice age.   The trees are all short, straight miniatures of what is seen elsewhere… again just like near the treelike of the arctic.  Weird place.

Departed in the morning sailing south again, this time for Wingfield Basin, which is at the north-east knuckle of the top of the Bruce Peninsula.   By the time we neared our destination, we were gain sailing fast in very large waves… When lifted to the top of each we scanned forward with binoculars to see what the entrance looked like.  I texted our friends ‘IF THERE ARE BREAKERS ACROSS THE ENTRANCE DO NOT TRY IT.  WE’LL CARRY ON TO LION’S HEAD’.   But in the boisterous sailing he didn’t see my message till hours later.

So up to Wingfield we bounded.  Valient was up ahead and the entrance did not look good from where we were.  Broad reaching now, Valiant was shearing port and starboard on the waves yawing wildly… oh no… then as they neared the entrance, which still looked untenable to us, she suddenly swept up to starboard and took her next wave bows on.  Half of her came out of the water… bow high in the air and down she crashed, sails flogging wildly.   The stayed in irons for a while just to weather of the rocks, then finally swung off on a safe heading coming back out and got under control.  While this was happening I thought for certain they were on the rocks, but no… just out of control.

Closer up ourselves we saw the entrance trended north east enough that there was a bit of a lee from a projection of the coast and the entrance was safe.  In we went and dropped anchor in a lovely very well sheltered harbour.  Having a drink with our friends later, they confessed they didn’t see my warning till after the got in.  Fred said ‘I didn’t event think the place might not be safe to enter’.  And by the look on his face I realized he was shaken by that thought.   Why the swoop up to weather?  Accidental broach.  Thank heavens it didn’t happen when they had the rocks actually to weather of them… but of course in that case the rocks might have muffled the waves enough they might not have broached.    And THAT prompted me to suggest again that perhaps they should remove the drive ring from their wheel.  The drive ring is for an Autohelm which does not function.  So to turn the wheel, they have to also push the gearing of the drive, and that completely removes what feel their helm has.  It’s as though the brake is always on.   Our A30 has factory mounted wheel steering which is free enough that if I release my fingers on the wheel, it spins back to zero helm.  It’s got as much feel as a tiller.  But theirs, although the same Edson cable steering, had no feel at all.  And that makes steering well, particularly in following seas, very difficult.   The ring is still in place…

So… next morning we set off for the village of Lion’s Head.   We sailed in a solid west wind south bound (yes, reaching again).  We knocked off the high headlands one after the other and in due course the rock formation called the Lion’s Head appeared.   We went into the harbour, got a pump out, refuel and showers… then walked up into town for a great meal at a pub.

Next day (I’ve lost count) we sailed east to cross the lower lobe of Georgian Bay.  What ho… we now had a south wind so we were reaching again.  Big waves… rushing fast sailing.  Terrific.   Half way across we picked up the Southern Georgian Bay Weather Buoy… cool to see the thing at last.  Carried on to the big islands coming to anchor on the western side of Beckwith.   Last day, motored in a dead calm back to Midland.

What a terrific trip… we moved our gear back home in the afternoon but missed the boat, so went back aboard for a quiet drink aboard her in our slip at the club.    

If any of you have had the patience to read down this far, and would like to see photos of the trip, send me your email address and I’ll send some to you.

Gordon Laco
426 Surprise
www.gordonlaco.com
705-527-9612