Friday August 17- Sunday August 19
We left Bad River and cruised around 20 miles to Burnt River area. We found an acceptable place and dropped the hook and spent the rest of the day reading and just relaxing. With overcast clouds and cool weather, this was a very good day to just veg out.
Saturday we traveled to Thomas Bay. Last year we traveled a bit with fellow loopers, Kathy and Bill on Ms Fullcharge. While they were on the Trent Severn, they had met and traveled with a local couple, Randy and Audrey, on an American Tug called Heart Tug. They told us that when we got to the Georgian Bay we should give them a call because they were very experienced with these waters and that they were a lot of fun. I had called Randy and we had set up a rendezvous point at an anchorage called Thomas Bay. From what we read in the books, we were a little apprehensive about going into this anchorage because there were a lot of submerged rocks. But, we headed in that direction anyway. Randy sent us a screen shot from his chart plotter that showed the way into the Thomas Bay Anchorage.
What a nice scenic trip.
Of course, you are really out in the boonies up here. If you want any TV you had to have a satellite dish.
Apparently, not just the people need a satellite feed for their TVs. This is a beaver hut.
Randy assured us that it would be fine and when we arrived at the entrance, he and his friend Steve from the boat Tug’n would met us on Randy’s dinghy and lead us in. We were going to tie the stern of the boat to the shore so we would not swing in the anchorage. We had a long 150 foot line ready at the stern. Randy told us where to turn the boat around and drop our anchor and back the boat toward the shoreline. They then came to the back of our boat and took the end of the line. They took the line to the shore and tied it to a large rock. This is a practice that a lot of Canadians do on small anchorages. Once the knot was tied, we pulled the line tight, so the anchor chain was tight and the rear line was tight as well. So we are safe and secure.
This anchorage is our very favorite so far.
Then they did the same to help Greek’s Folly.
Now that we are tied in it is time to launch the dinghy.
Tied in safe and secure.
This is the view from the top.
We anchored next to Randy and Audrey and Steve and Fran boats.
There are beautiful white granite rocks, clean clear water and a really nice rock that you can take your dinghy over to for “Rocktails” in the afternoon. Randy would go around to all the boats at the anchorage and invite everyone over to the rocks. You just needed to bring chairs, a drink and an appetizer. Fun! The next morning Randy came over to our boat and sat down to tell us about some other interesting anchorages that we shouldn’t miss.
For the most part, all of these people were veteran Canadian cruisers who spent their summers cruising the Georgian Bay and North Channel. Upon talking about places that should not be missed, they were shocked at all of the places that we had visited during our travels. They were especially impressed by our passing thru Hangdog Channel.
This is Randy and Audrey.
The view of our boats from our Rocktails perch.
Around noon around 10 of us got on our 5 dinghies and rode 5 miles (in some pretty challenging seas) to Killarney for lunch at Herbert’s Fish Restaurant. Maybe not the best decision as there was wind, waves and a lot of open water. It made for a wet bumpy ride.
Huge new log conference center being built.
There was tons of activity here.
This is Roger and Lorrie on another 44 DeFever . They are getting ready to drop their dink to go for a ride with the people from Aurora and Hallelujah.
The local liquor store with outrageous prices.
Hallelujah’s dink is ready to go.
Steve and Dianne from Aurora.
Roger and Lorrie from Reality
Dave and Barn from Hallelujah
There is a lot more that boat traffic in Killarney.
This was the sign on the west side of Killarney. It is the dividing point between the North Channel and Georgian Bay.
The lighthouse on the east end of Killarney.
Damn, they didn’t have valet parking for our dinks.
It was interesting seeing Killarney by dinghy knowing that we will be back in the next day with the big boat. We ate at the World Famous Herbert’s Fish Restaurant.
It was another bumpy wet ride back to the anchorage. The other 3 dinks took off faster than we traveled and they kind of left us behind. Tom and Colletta’s dinghy is smaller and could not travel as fast as the rest without getting the crap beat out of them so Pam and I slowed way down to make sure that we stuck together. We knew roughly where to go to get back to the anchorage. Eventually, 2 of the other dinks came back out to meet us. They apologized for leaving the new kids on the block behind. No problems, again just part of the adventure.
After we got back, John, Tom and Colletta climbed up on the rocks and got some cool pictures of the anchorage.
Pam stayed on the boat and grabbed Johns camera to document our climb as we went to the top.
She was using a telephoto zoom lens on my camera. You really can’t tell how high we are.
Pam was shooting her pictures from the back of the boat while we were hiking.
What a cool anchorage…
Randy and his friend were both heavy into solar power. They rarely need to use their generators all summer long. We even felt a little guilty running our gens in this anchorage. But the gens on both of our boats are really quiet so it was not a problem.
Again that night we did Rocktails on the rock island. We were joined by a couple more boats that were staying at the anchorage. After dinner Randy came back over to our boat again and showed us a few more anchorages in the North Channel that he thought that we would like before we head back to the USA. We were so glad that we met Randy, Audrey, Steve and Fran. Great people! Hopefully we will catch up with them again next year.
As boaters, we always check weather forecasts and they weren’t good. We were headed to Killarney next so it was just 5 miles for us and then we would be tied safely in a slip. However, our friends were headed in the other direction and rather than taking the more scenic route, they had to take to the open water to beat the incoming weather. Randy is just pulling away here.
