Day 37
Travel Time: 1 hour
NM today: 6
NM total: 829
Locks today: 0
Locks total: 70
For me today turned out
to be the highlight of the whole trip thus far. The weather was great and the day was
fun. We had a short travel day again
today which was very nice. As we
prepared to depart a seaplane sailed by the end of the dock we were tied
to. Clark quick ran and grabbed the
camera.
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| Seaplane in Killarney, ON |
We traveled to Covered
Portage Cove as our destination for today.
As I stowed anchors and lines for our departure, a man on the next boat
over asked me our destination. I just stared
at him because for the life of me I could not come up with the name of the
place. He could tell I had no clue, so
he resorted to pointing – left? Or right?
That I could handle and pointed in response. “Oh, Little Current”, he said. “Not today”, I answered, “to an anchorage”. “But it’s only one and a half hours to Little
Current”, he replied. “I know”, I said,
“but we want to see a couple of anchorages first”. He nodded his head in understanding.
We took “the long way”
to get to the cove from Killarney. Clark
expected the chart plotter to highlight the route with a magenta line. One appeared on his chart that he thought led
us to the cove when in fact it took us the other way. I pointed out that he had missed our turn,
and he turned to the proper heading using a wide arc to miss some rocks to our
starboard.
It seemed no sooner had
we left Killarney than Covered Portage Cove appeared on the charts, and before
we knew it we had arrived and started hunting for our spot to drop anchor. According to the boating guides, Covered
Portage can be so busy “that it looks like a marina”, and therefore, can be
hard to get into to get a spot. We
targeted our arrival to mid-morning to allow folks from the night before time
to leave but to get us there before other boaters who most likely had further
to travel. As it turned out, even though
it is Friday, plenty of space presented itself for us to choose from.
In Killarney this
weekend there is a Fish Fry Festival of some sort and in Little Current there
is a sailboat gathering. Maybe all the
boaters went to one of those two events.
I am very glad we missed the mass chaos of the fish fry at
Killarney. According to the staff at The
Sportsmans Inn, the town will be packed and the marinas full. We plan to arrive in Little Current on
Sunday, so hopefully the sailboats will have departed by the time we get there.
While exploring the area
to decide where to drop our anchor, we cozied up to a sailboat preparing to
depart and asked them about the anchorage.
He said he had been in this cove for 5 days and loved every minute. He pointed out trail entry points that we
might like to explore, so of course, Clark couldn’t wait to get settled and go
for a look around. I looked around and
saw rock cliffs and trees. Then I looked up when I heard voices and I saw people walking around on the cliffs above
us.
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| Hard-to-See People on Clifftop Among Trees |
We grabbed a quick lunch
so we could go play. Clark thought the
kayaks a better choice for exploring, so we pulled them down. I do not trust myself not to get wet in a
kayak, so I insisted in wearing my water shoes and bringing my sneakers along
in a backpack to keep them dry for hiking.
I wish I had my hiking shoes on this trip and that is something that is
on my “get when home” list. Clark took
the backpack so I did not have to deal with it as I have enough problems just
getting myself into and out of my kayak.
I still find it “no
picnic” to get into the dinghy off the swim platform of the boat with the
dinghy taking up 90% of the swim platform space, but I am getting better at
it. Still when I got in the kayak today,
he rocked in such a severe manner that I thought I might take a dip. I appreciated the fact that Clark had my
walking shoes instead of me all the more.
After a few whoa wobbles, I got stabilized, took my paddle from Clark,
and headed out towards the first trail spot.
After the very short
ride to shore, we pulled our kayaks up into the weeds and tied them to an old
stump. I changed into my sneakers and we
started up the trail. Although a gradual
climb I still found myself struggling to keep up with Clark as he scurried up
the trail. Turned out he was trying to
outrun the mosquitoes we disturbed by our presence and leaving me far behind in
the process.
Thankfully the mosquito
portion of the hike concluded when we came out into the open, breezy and sunny
rock cliffs portion of the trail.
Climbing over the rocks presented numerous challenges in terms of
finding footholds that allowed me to ascend to the top of the trail. The view, however, rewarded our efforts
100-fold. We were greeted by a truly
magnificent view of the cove below us as well as far out over the trees to the
bay beyond. Gorgeous!!!
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| View of Sea Moss from the Trail at Covered Portage Cove |
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| Rock wall along edge of cove as seen from top of the cliff |
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| Ev and Clark at the clifftop |
When we got back to our
kayaks after our thrilling hike, we decided to go to a second trail on the
opposite side of the cove. We no sooner
pulled our kayaks up to the start of the trail than swarms of mosquitoes
attacked. Their moto was clearly “take
no prisoners” as they came in for the kill.
I killed several on my face, had a multitude buzzing in my ears, and
even more chewing on my arms. My arms
swung round and round like a windmill. I
yelled to Clark to come back with the insect repellant we had placed in the
backpack, and we sprayed each other with copious amounts of bug spray which
seemed to give some relief.
We climbed up the trail
and found a sunny, rocky spot with a breeze.
I waited there while Clark did some investigating. He came back with a report that the view was
not worth the time to go further. That’s
all I needed to hear and I was “outta there” and down that trail back to the
kayak as fast as I could go without falling head over heels on the way.
I don’t think I have
ever changed my shoes that fast before.
Clark kept moving over on the side and was ready to go in a hurry when I
told him I was set. I climbed into the
kayak and Clark pushed me off backwards into the water. I fought my way through the weeds and tree
stumps to get out – it seemed much easier coming in, and eventually got myself
backed out into the waters.
I then went on a
mosquito hunt as they covered my arms and legs.
One clever guy was down beyond my feet and so I could not reach him to
kill him by swatting, so I got handfuls of water and washed him overboard
instead. Clark went paddling by me at
lightning speed saying he was blowing away the mosquitoes with the breeze.
After the bug fest, we
enjoyed a relaxing kayak ride through the cove spying on the other boats and
checking out the scenery from water level.
I can never stay dry when I kayak as the water runs off the paddles and
drips all over me. Today I did not care
in the least as the cool – cold water dripping on me felt great. Eventually Clark pointed out that 4:00 had
arrived and we needed to head back to Sea Moss to “put away our toys”.
I managed to get myself
out of the kayak and back onto Sea Moss without toppling over or tipping the
kayak precariously, so I felt proud of myself.
I helped Clark stow the kayaks back on top and decided that I needed a
shower. We have limited water on board
so I decided that I could “shower” off the back of the boat. However, the water temperature measured
somewhere between 65 and 67 degrees.
Brrrrrrr! I could not bring
myself to jump into that.
Nevertheless I decided I
wanted to wash off the sunscreen, bug spray, dead mosquitoes, and sweat. I got my soap, shampoo, towels and a bucket
and sat myself down on the one square foot of swim platform available and
washed from head to toe (wearing my bathing suit) in the frigid water. I started from the feet up to get used to it
as the thought of starting by washing my hair was more than I could
handle. Even though I washed my hair
last it still took my breath away when the water hit my head. I felt great afterwards, however, so it was
well worth it.
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