A...MAZE...ING

Wednesday morning we left Parry Sound and headed to Stairs Island, (there is suppose to be a house that has a lot of stairs, so that's how it got it's name but we did not see the house). The waters here are uncharted but were recommended and we found a nice place to anchor out of the wind. We took a dinghy ride through the Hemlock Channel, which was just beautiful.

Hemlock Channel

 

 

After we left Stairs Island we left the small craft route (for a short period) and headed out into Georgian Bay passing the Pointe au Baril Light House. This is a locally popular lighthouse which gives tours but was closed when we went by. Then we headed to the Bustard Islands. The best way to describe this section of the small craft channel is, it's a maze. There are inlets, outlets, channels and bays that twist and turn (with good buoy markings) around a lot of "wannabe" islands. The criteria for an island is that it is more than 1 square foot and supports at least 1 living tree. The wannabe's are just rocks either just below the surface or just above. From the bridge we could see all the rocks to the side of the channel, some of the channels are no more than 20 feet wide. One wrong turn and it could spell disaster. I am glad I am the admiral and not the captain! Much to our surprise there were only 2 boats anchored in the Bustards, a few more joined by the end of the day. This was another beautiful anchorage.

Pointe au Baril Light House

 

 

Narrow channels on the small craft route.

Our anchorage in the Bustards. 

 



Sitting on an unnamed rock, somewhere in Northern

Georgian Bay watching the sun go down.

We have been fortunate to have 9 days of good weather in a row...Friday saw an end to that. It was raining all day and windy, we stayed at anchor in the Bustards and did some housekeeping and reading.

View from our boat at our Bustard Island anchorage.

Rain and wind. Notice how calm the water is, choosing

a good anchorage pays dividends on crappy days.

Saturday promised some better weather and we headed to the Bad River Channel. This was an amazing anchorage. There are the Devil Door Rapids to a small channel that we went through with the dinghy. There is another maze of channels and rapids that we explored. They say the rapids are not running as fast this year as the water level is high, but it was so much fun! Then we climbed the granite ledge overlooking the bay. There were some blueberry bushes on the way up, unfortunately the blueberries were very small. It was a great view of all the boats and the bay. Mark did some fishing there Sunday morning and we had bass for dinner Sunday night. We had planned on staying at the Bad River for another day but the weather forecast was for high winds and we needed to make a run across Georgian Bay, so we decided to leave Sunday and head for Mill Lake. We ran into fog and some wind on the Bay but made it to Mill Lake where we spent the night before heading to Killarney.

Lover's Lane Rapids

It's a blast racing through these with the dinghy,

very narrow and very fast water but plenty deep

enough for running the outboards.

View of the Bad River anchorage from the top of the granite ledge.

Another view from the top.