Little Current and Gore Bay are on Manitoulin Island. It's the largest fresh water island in the world, spanning 1,068 square miles. The island boasts three rivers that are spawning grounds for Atlantic Salmon and trout, and has 108 freshwater lakes, some even with their own islands.
Gore Bay has a lovely marina with new docks and facilities. CYC (Canadian Yacht Charters) home bases here, so when you want to charter a sailboat or motor yacht, these are the folks to contact. The town seems in decline; however, the area was gorgeous.
We made the Little Current to Gore Bay passage with a new buddy boat, See Life, another Looper boat. Fid and Deb are from Grand Junction, CO. Our newfound buddy boat was short, though. They decided to head north into the Channel to do some fishing.
We left early the next morning bound for Drummond Island, another long haul. The trip went well inspite of predictions of building winds that never materialized. Drummond Island, MI, is our first US port. Like any good trip, it's always great to be "back home." When we rounded Chippewa Point on Drummond, the water color drastically changed to an aqua. With the many islands, if we didn't know better, we could've been in the Virgin Islands or the Bahamas. The water was crystal clear.
It had been in the North Channel, too, but with the rock bottom the blue was always much deeper in color or green because of the tall growing weeds.
Two Customs agents met us at the dock on arrival for an easy checkin. A show of our passports and the recording of our US Customs Users Decal number and we were done. We anchored off Harbor Island nearby for the night.
We were underway about 0900 on Mon headed for St. Ignace, MI. There were tons of islands to navigate around the past two days. We carefully plan our next days route the afternoon or evening before. It would be most helpful sometimes if the islands had signs with their names on them! Rich watches the chart plotter and I follow with the paper charts to keep us on track. It was another good day on the water and we arrived at St. Ignace Municipal Marina by 2:30PM. Reggie is happy to be in a marina again to enjoy meeting new folks and doggies. He barely tolerates our anchoring. He likes riding in the dinghy to and from shore but is much too particular where to do "his business" when he arrives!
This is an awesome spot - really nice marina and quaint town. The weather has been glorious while we hear of friends and family suffering with 100 degree temps.
My sister and family from MN are arriving Thurs evening for the weekend, which we are so looking forward to. We plan to take the ferry to Mackinac Island on Fri. Sat is open to several possibilities so they can make their choice. Their eleven hour drive to see us grants them that privilege! We'll be making many memories. Stay tuned -
we're going to be NINE on Crazy Eights. None of us quite knows how we're going to do this but we're going to have a blast!
So for now, that's it from Lee, Rich and Reggie. Our very best to all.
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