Day 340: Monday, August 10, 2013
Port to Port: Midland, Ontario to Starr Island
Underway: 7:21 am Motor Off: 11:36 pm Miles Traveled: 24/19 Stayed At: Anchor
First Things First: Hit 5,000 miles about an hour out of Midland.
Mile 5 to Mile 24: We set sail (actually just motored) out of the marina a little after 7 am headed toward our first anchorage in Georgian Bay only a few hours away. After we left the protection of the bay, the waves built up and gave us a lumpy ride until we entered the small craft route farther north. It would have been perfect sailing conditions if the wind hadn’t been on our nose most of time. After weaving in and out of hundreds of islands (above the water) and thousands of rocks (below the water) we wound our way into an amazing little cove by Starr Island. What is even more amazing is that, I found out after reading Jess’s trip log (that she wrote during our 2002 trip when she was 13), we stayed in this same bay in 2002. I had no idea when I randomly picked this spot before leaving Midland. How cool is that.
I led the way in and scoped out a private little cove with no other boats in it and found that the chart date was a little inaccurate. We anchored in an area charted as 2 feet but found 9 feet of water. Carina followed our lead and anchored a little farther out to get enough swing room. It was a little hard to stop cruising before noon but this is one place worth spending the time to enjoy.
The sun was shining and the surrounding islands blocked the wind so I decided to lay down on the cockpit seat and soak up a little sun while resting my eyes for a few minutes. I had barely closed my eyes for 5 minutes when, for some unknown reason, I looked up and saw a trawler passing by on the small craft route on the other side of the island. I only got a 10 second glimpse but it looked a lot like Spiritus (or 100 other trawlers we have seen on this trip). I couldn’t tell for sure but I told Cindy to hail Spiritus on the VHF Ch 16 (which we haven’t been monitoring for a long time). She did it twice. Amazingly, we got a response…from Eddy…again. I saw the boat appear on the other side of the island and, instead of taking a left along the small craft route, they looped around and slowly motored into our little cove and happy reunion number 43 was soon underway. What are the odds?
After they got anchored, we swung over on our anchor line and rafted up with them and got caught up again from our chance encounter a couple days ago. Going ashore here is a must – the scenery is, as Eddy calls it, prehistoric. Billion plus year old granite sanded smooth by mile high ice sheets and covered with small tenacious trees, plants and flowers. We even found some ripe raspberries as a treat. Kent from Carina motored over too and we did some minor exploring in the warm afternoon sun. It turned out that Carina and Spiritus met before in Tarpon Springs after the horrible crossing of the Gulf.
After our explorations, we did a few boat projects and regrouped for boat-tails and snacks on Spiritus at 5 pm. What a great time. There was only a short dicey period when Jane came onboard – Eddy and Linda are Auburn fans and Jane is an Alabama fan – their gang colors didn’t match. But after some good natured ribbing and discussions of past winning seasons, all was well in Friendship Bay (our new name for this beautiful anchorage). Kent and Jane have sailed a lot in Eddy and Linda’s backyard of Navarre, Florida so they had a lot in common to talk about. What a lucky string of events to have this memorable little get together happen.
After Kent and Jane dinghied back to Carina (as Eddy and Linda sang the Auburn fight song for Jane’s benefit), we whipped up the fixings for tacos and had another party on Spiritus. We ended the evening with a rough and tumble game of Quiddler (kind of like Scrabble with cards) – I won – and said goodnight.
