Friday June 16

We left Little Current around 11:30 with Meant to Be II headed towards Croker Island and the Benjamins.  We ended up anchoring in a bay in the Benjamin’s.  It was another clear day with lots of sun. Could it get any better than this?We had a great night surrounded by rocks, water and some ducks.We awoke to rain on Saturday, and decided to leave around 7:00, headed back to Little Current, we made the 10:00 opening of the swing bridge, as it continued to rain.   We crossed Frazier Bay, and Heywood Island, which we had contemplated stopping at, but with the rain decided to keep going, we were in Killarney shortly after noon,and continued on to Collins inlet.  We had decided to go back to Mill Lake and anchor there for the night.  We reached Mill Lake by 2:00.  By 3:30 the rain stopped and the sun peaked out.

On Sunday we woke early to rain and fog, we waited until about 8:45 for the fog to lift.  As we traveled through Collins inlet and Beaverstone Bay, there were places where the fog was really socked in. We went by many islands with names like the chickens, sow, toad, fox, and sheep- not sure why all the animal names.

Once out of Beaverstone, we had the 25 mile crossing of Georgian Bay to the Bustard Islands. The fog was thick and it took both of us searching in front of the boat to find the markers.we arrived in the Bustards at 12:30 and anchored behind Tie Island for the night or so we thought.There was one other boat in the anchorage.The wind started picking up and at about 7:30, we re-set the anchor as we had drifted about 10 feet.  We wrote down our coordinates and watched them constantly. At about 10:00 we decided that we should watch throughout the night.  I was fine with that as I had just started reading Drums of Autumn, which is a 1000 page book.  At about midnight after several gusts of wind, I woke Andy up to say our anchor was dragging again we had moved about 30 feet, and were getting close to one of the shores.  He started up the engines and moved us into shallow water and reset the anchor again, for added protection we set out second anchor off the bow as well.  Every time the wind gusted we could hear scraping along the rock, but it seemed to hold, with minimal swinging. The wind remained strong throughout the night. I stayed up reading until 4 a.m. before crawling into bed.  Andy got up at about 4:45 and kept watch.

At 8:40 we left the anchorage for Britt which was about 23 miles away. With the winds still blowing there were 1 meter plus waves and swells, and we had about 4 1/2 miles of open water until we reached some protection from islands.   Not a fun hour, we were slammed left and right!  The rocks look quite a bit more frightening, when they have 4 foot waves crashing over them.   No pictures, I couldn’t stand and hold the camera steady. I think we lost one of our boat hooks with all the rocking.  We weaved our way through the channel passing Dead Island, Bigsby, Rogers Champlain, Golden Sword, Cunninghams and the Mcnab rocks before turning into the South Channel of Byng Inlet.    We arrived at Britt at 11:15.  It really felt good to be tied to a dock!

On Tuesday, the winds were still quite strong, so we decided to stay in Britt for another day.   We cleaned the boat, using our new 1/3 HP pump and lake water.  There were hundreds of shad/fish flies that had clung to the  boat in the past few days .  It was nice to finally have their carcasses scrubbed off.  We went to St. Amant Waterfront café for lunch ad tried the fresh pickerel.  I enjoyed it; however Andy wasn’t too thrilled with the tartar sauce-like gravy that covered his fish he had assumed that the sauce would be on the side.

Our friends from Meant to be II, arrived later in the afternoon, they had been out in the winds for many hours, coming from Collins inlet.   We barbecued that evening, with Glen, Julie and Brooke from Mary Mary and enjoyed a wonderful evening.

On Wednesday morning, we took on about 500 litres of diesel, which would be more than enough to take us back to Buckhorn.  On Business and Meant to be II, left Byng Inlet at 9:00.  The winds had subsided a little, but it was still blowing as we navigated through the Norgate rocks and then the Hangdogs.

We called Gilly’s in  Snug Harbour at about noon, after passing Port au Barrelto find out how deep the water was at the government dock and were told that it was greater than 5 feet. I recalled that the previous summer, Still Water II had found a lot of mud when they went to Gillys.   Eating at Gilly’s had been recommended by Dave and Claudia as well as Brooke.When we got to the restaurant around 2:00 we were the only ones there. It was great, Andy had the pickerel and Glen and I tried the whitefish, which was the house special, Julie had fish tacos.  The fish was amazing.  We took dessert to go, I selected a butter tart, Andy picked the brownie and Julie and Glen took the apple crisp.   We left Snug Harbour and Andy led us into our anchorage for the night at Windsor Island, south of Franklin Island.  We had spent a night there in 2016.  Glen and Julie were visited by a snapping turtle, but he didn’t come our way. On Thursday morning, Andy and I left at about 7:00,  cut through the canoe channeland headed across Parry Sound as we had hoped to go the 55 miles to Beausoleil Island.  Julie and Glen were going to leave later, and head towards Port Severn.   Since they have a cruiser, we had half expected them to overtake us at some point.  We texted them to learn that they were having engine issues.  We decided to turn around and go back to Jones Island and wait for news from them.

While anchored, Glen called to say he had jumped the battery and was able to get started.  They were headed to Parry Sound for service.    We continued on our way, went and reached Beausoleil Island at 3:15.  There were only two other small boats at the docks.    At about 5:00, Glen and Julie called to say they were going to try to reach Beausoleil for the night.  They arrived shortly after 7:00.  We had docktails, and moved on to Meant to Be II when the rain started.

On Friday morning June 23^rd, Andy made pancakes, Glen and Julie came over for breakfast.  Just before 9:00 they left headed for the Port Severn lock.  We did some cleaning, and left at about 10:40 headed across the bay to Queen’s Cove Marina at Victoria Harbour.

At about 1:30, Brian and Helen arrived at the marina.  They are going to spend a couple of days on-board with us.  We visited in the afternoon and went to Queen’s Quay restaurant for supper.

Week 3 is done, two more weeks and then we have to head back to Winnipeg.