Killarney 8-19-10

We left our anchorage at 11am after rain, wind and t-storms. We now know why the anchor held so well—lots of mud and long stringy grass which knotted around itself and required 2 boat poles and the washdown pump set on a fire hose setting to dislodge.
As we traveled down the Collins Inlet narrows, the sun started to shine and outlined the granite cliffs. What a difference a day makes—today we have light NW winds off land and it is an easy 14 miles to Killarney.

You are greeted by the Killarney East Light at Red Rock Point and it guides you into a bustling little harbor of marinas, a general store, restaurants, and resorts on one side and George Island on the other. There is a 2 hour trail back to the lighthouse that we enjoyed. We are docked at the Sportsman’s Inn Marina which has undergone major renovations and provides everything you need. The marina will ferry you over to George Island where you can do the 7.5 km Killarney Wilderness hike—it takes you through the forest on a well-marked trail and then loops along the coast. I hope to get better pictures, but can you see the white quartzite of the La Cloche Mountains in the distance, the pink granite shore rocks and the blue green lake water. I have to get out the Crayola 48 crayon box to match this color.

Since we walked our socks off, we were starving and stopped for a late lunch at Herbert Fisheries. You place your order at the school bus out front and the fishermen bring the fish right off the boat. It does not get fresher than this. Gateway Restaurant has a good breakfast and bakery and the General Store has a good supply for basic reprovisioning, but it is expensive.

Nobody knows why the town’s name changed from the Ojibwe Shebahonaning or “safe passage” to Killarney in the 1850s. I grew up in an Irish household where we heard Bing Crosby’s Christmas in Killarney every holiday season. Try as I may, I can not get that corny song out of my head. I expected to see lots of leprechaun Santas doing a jig down Main Street or one of those kitschy Christmas stores. None here, thank goodness, but I still can’t stop humming that silly song.

Rolling from Britt to Collins Inlet 8-18-10

We’ve had a great time here at Britt with lots of boaters hunkered down due to the 20-30 knot wind on open Georgian Bay. The main conversation is weather, exchanging stories of other windy adventures and offering guesstimates about when the wind will abate. The weather gurus (Passagemaker, Environment Canada, National Weather Service and the dock boys) all agreed that early Wednesday morning would offer an opportunity for less adventurous travel.

We set the alarm for 6am, were away from the dock by 7 and all looked good with a forecast of SW 10 knots building to 15 by noon. Our plan was to take the small boat channel to the Bustard Islands, but that quickly changed when we got to the channel entrance and started having Chartplotter problems. I coasted in neutral while Bob tried to fix it but could not get a sailing line (preferred route to travel) reading at all. With all the twists and turns, multiple islands and 5 foot water depth levels in spots, we did not want to try this section without all our technology working. Besides, weather on open Georgian Bay was reportedly easy.

Wrong….very wrong. We set a course for the Bustard Islands. I wanted to go there for the name alone, but by 9:30 am, we had 15 knot wind and 2-3 building beam seas so the relatively treeless, unprotected and poor holding ground of the Bustards was not a good choice. Wind also made entrance to the Bad River area hazardous.

We continued on the same course to Beaverstone Bay as the wind increased to 20+ knots and 3-4 foot beam seas which really rocked and rolled us. We were battened down but the waves were so close and constant that it rattled the cabinets open, spilling the contents and that has never happened before. Bungees and duct tape to the rescue.

I told you that I would log the good, the bad and the ugly and we now have a new ugly—the toilet (head) overflowed. Our cruelly-named joker valve is probably wearing out and could not get a good seal with all the jarring motion. Bob and the autopilot steered; I had toilet duty—insert your thoughts here.

We turned into Beaverstone Bay at 12:30pm and had 4-5 foot rolling following seas and luckily the entrance is wide and deep as it was hard to steer. All the Beaverstone anchorages had whitecaps so we continued into the Collins Inlet through some skinny 5’1” water to get to a Great Lakes Cruising Club (GLCC) anchorage recommendation at Mill Lake. We dropped the hook in 8 feet of water and began to relax after 50 long hard miles.

Oh, and the Chartplotter problem—nothing really wrong at all except that the sailing line is missing only on the first 5 miles out of Byng Inlet west on the Garmin add-on chart. More importantly, the toilet is working fine, too.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling on to Britt (Byng Inlet) 8-14-10

You know how Tina Turner starts out the song, Proud Mary, with “….nice and easy….” and then switches to “nice and rough..”, well that’s where we are today. We left the safety of the Pointe au Baril Lighthouse and the small boat channel behind and headed out to open Georgian Bay. We have been doing pretty easy protected boating on the entire Great Circle Loop and have not been out in 25 knot winds and 4 foot roller coaster following seas since we left Lake Michigan in 9/08.

Welcome back to the Great Lakes— eastern Lake Superior is only 200 miles away and has 9 foot seas and gale force winds at 40 knots. We know how to do this but forgot to batten down everything so things were flying everywhere. We were traveling with The Last Whale, a 48 foot Whaleback Krogen with a height of 20 feet and also equipped with stabilizers, but even they dipped a little. Here’s a view from our cockpit but Joe and Leila told us that our little Baby Grand would disappear in the waves and when they send us that picture, I will post it here. As former sailors, we are accustomed to following seas and surfing to the next wave—it’s those darn beam seas that we can’t do well now.

We’re safely tucked in now at St. Amant’s Marina in Britt in the Byng Inlet. We will probably be here a few days waiting for winds to go down so we can travel to the Bustard Islands to anchor. This is a great place to hang out—great dining at the Little Britt Inn, great company with the trailer sailors, Loopers in Wright’s Marina, would-be Loopers who happen by to chat and “Happy Hour” with boaters here in St. Amant’s.