Georgian Bay, Canada: Regatta Bay to Unnamed Anchorage

Day 33

Travel Time: 4.5 hours

NM today: 24

NM total: 732

Locks today: 0

Locks total: 70

We woke up to fog – not predicted, not expected!  Once again travel plans were uncertain.  Navigating in these waters is hard enough without a cloak of invisibility covering the buoys and land marks.  Instead of lifting as expected more fog kept rolling in and the winds were picking up. 

Morning Fog in Regatta Bay

 We decided our first order of business was to decide whether to go back to Killbear Marine Store for the float switch or abort that agenda item.  Clark decided to call the marine store for more information.  When he dialed, he thought he was redialing the marine store number, but instead he called the AGLCA harbor host whom he forgot he had tried to call last night.  That became a diversion as Clark asked for and received very useful navigation details and recommendations for these waters. 

That business out of the way, Clark called Killbear marine and decided that we really should go back to buy the part.  He said that if he knew the waters and there was no fog, he could use the dinghy to go the 6 miles back to the store, but since neither was true, we had to pull up anchor and travel there by big boat.  Six miles doesn’t sound far, but with so many islands around this area, it is very easy to get lost and travel is slow going.

If you read the last blog entry, you may remember that a local boater tied our boat to a tree when we anchored.  Well, when it came time to leave, he and his dinghy were nowhere to be seen. 

Dilemma helped us tie stern to shore

Clark launched his kayak and paddled over to untie us.  Since the kayak is on top of the boat, launching is not a two-minute job.  The paddling and untying were the two minutes part, but all told it took about thirty minutes to get ourselves released from the anchorage and on our way.

We learned from the owner of St Tropez that we could safely travel canoe passage aptly named as when we approached it looked like the trees were almost touching across the passage.  Along the way up here, we’ve seen signs for 10 km/hr and 9 km/hr, but Canoe Passage was marked 8 km/hr.  I’m telling you that is slow going! 

Canoe Passage

Before we knew it, we were done with Canoe Passage and back at Killbear Marine Store.  Clark bought the replacement switch for a whopping $66.  They are advertised online for $35, so they have some nice markup going on here.  Before leaving the marina, Clark screwed the switch into place to make sure it would fit.  He didn’t wire it in though as he figured he could do that later.

While he was dealing with the switch issue and introducing himself to the owners of St Tropez who pulled into the marina while we were there, I stopped into the marina store to see what food they had on hand.  Not surprisingly they had the same food as yesterday.  I remembered they had potatoes and onions, but I didn’t know if they had any other vegetables.  I found canned corn, which neither Clark nor I eat, and that was it, so no produce to add to my food supplies. Ah well, no problem as I still have some veggies on hand.

The trip to our next anchorage was rather long.  We decided that the day had cleared enough that we should move on to our next stop (Plan A) as opposed to going back to Regatta Bay (Plan B) where we had anchored last night.  We left Regatta Bay at around 10:45 this morning and arrived at a secluded no-name bay at just after 3:00.  Clark decided that the peninsula where we are anchored looks like a pointing finger, so he has named it Pointing Finger Bay.  We entered at mile marker 31.5 and made a sharp 90 degree turn to port.  The bay is west of Stairs Island and east of Eureka Point.  Very secluded spot as we are the only ones here!

We notice that there are for sale signs all over the place up here.  Lots of cottages are available for purchase should we decide we want to live in mosquito country.  Even in this remote and pristine hideaway bay with nothing around us, there is a big for sale sign on the shore.  I wonder if that means the island is for sale as I don’t see a cottage. 

I can’t help but wonder as we pass by these developed islands, what it costs to build a house on a piece of land where every stick of wood and plumbing fixture and everything in between must be carried in by boat.  When we were there, I saw a speedboat go by the Big Sound Marina in Parry Sound with a load of lumber in the side seat.  It looked like it was ready for a jousting match.  If a repair is required at a house on an island, the raw materials get brought in by whatever means makes sense, i.e. by boat.  I wonder how close The Home Depot is to the docks!

The sun finally made an appearance at 4:00.  I headed for my laptop to work on the blog, and Clark pulled out his charts to plot a course for our next destination.  After he finished with that tedious job, he decided to work on the sump pump repair.  With repair jobs one thing always leads to another and another and another.  To connect the wires of the float switch to the power source Clark used ‘butt connectors’ that require a heat gun to shrink wrap the connection.  Since it was just about 5:30, he said he was going to turn on the generator for the heat gun and did I want to use electricity to make dinner.  That put me into high gear to throw some things together to cook with the luxury of electric. 

I have been looking and looking in stores for sweet treats for Clark to eat at night before bed, but most of what I have found has not been to his liking so I haven’t bothered to buy it.  As soon as he said electric, I knew I wanted to jump on the chance to make him one of his favorite treats – Applesauce Cake.  The recipe for this is something that I got from Clark’s mother years ago.  I scanned the recipe into my computer along with a few other favorites before we left NJ.  I normally don’t carry baking ingredients on the boat, but I packed up all the ingredients to a few of Clark’s favorites including the necessary spices.

I had to half the recipe because the only electric oven I have is a two-slice GE toaster oven that I have owned for as long as I can remember.  I know I used it on our old boat in 1993 to make toast for everyone because we were freezing cold in Lake Champlain area, and I don’t know how many years I owned it before then.  Well anyway, I digress, but it’s an old faithful for sure.  The small loaf pan I use for this recipe was just right to fit in the toaster oven.

As I was trying to mix the ingredients to the cake and get that going, I was also digging out my rice cooker to take advantage of making rice for a side dish.  While all that was going on, Clark asked me for a solution to a sump pump issue.  Now that he had a new float switch, the strainer no longer fit in the pump.  I asked him the dimensions of what he needed and got very unhelpful answers. “The opening is 1.156 inches”, he said.  “By how long?” I queried.  “Four inches or I can’t measure”, he replied.  Huh?

He asked if I could rig up something with my plastic canvas, though he doesn’t know it’s called that, similar to the solution I put in place with his scupper holes always getting clogged.  I said I could if I knew the dimensions.  He showed me what he had in mind, and I cut a piece of plastic canvas for him to “play” with to determine the right size.  Together we came up with a solution.

Now remember that I was trying to mix the ingredients for a cake, start the rice cooker, and make the rest of dinner while this discussion was going on.  I asked if he could wait until after dinner for me to actually assemble his new plastic strainer.  He agreed it could wait, so I baked my cake, cooked my rice, and sautéed my chicken before pulling out my sewing needles.

One dilemma I had regarding the creation of the filter was what to use for thread.  I had no lanyard on board but if I did it would not fit through the holes in the plastic canvas, so for this to work, I had to find another solution.  Thread would just rot in a short time.  Looking through my “tools” I found something my sister will appreciate called “Stretch Magic” used for jewelry making.  I decided this was “just the ticket”.  It is some sort of stretchy plastic type material used to make bracelets, etc.  I could thread a needle with it, and I could get the needle through the fine mesh of the plastic canvas.  Perfect!

The strainer slid into place and looks like it will work.  The dinner was yummy.  Clark hasn’t tried the applesauce cake yet (that will happen at bedtime), but I’m hoping for a home run on tonight’s activities.  At 5:00 I was wondering how I would be spending my peaceful evening.  By the time I had finished my impulse activities, it was already going on for 9:00.  My how time flies by on a boat!