More Photos Enroute to St. Ignace, MI

It was good to see the US Coast Guard on duty. The Canadian Coast Guard is very different because they are search and rescue and community service. They do no law enforcement, like their US counterparts. Since Canada does not allow guns, their Coast Guard and Customs agents are unarmed. Two Royal Canadian Mounty officers stopped by Crazy Eights for a visit in Gore Bay, just checking our Canadian Customs registration that we received in Kingston. They were nice, friendly young guys - tough duty on a Saturday afternoon! Rich asked where their red jackets and black Mounty hats were, because they were casually dressed! These officers were from Sioux St. Marie and they were assigned to help out the customs officers with checking visiting boat registrations. They shared that the government is considering arming their Customs folks because of 9/11 - decisions obviously aren't made quickly. The Coast Guard patrols that we saw were mostly 3-5 young men and women in a large red inflatable boat. We were told that they are college kids. Interesting...............

The other photo is of the light house at the harbor entrance to Manitowac Island. The famous Grand Hotel with its very long veranda is a major landmark on the island. It was featured in the movie, "Somewhere in Time" with Christopher Reeves, that was filmed at the grand lady. Now days they charge you $10 to sit in a rocking chair on the veranda if you're not a hotel guest!

Days 62 - 64, Aug 4 - 6th, Gore Bay, Drummond Island to St. Ignace

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.

Days 59 - 61, Aug 1 - 3rd, Collins Inlet, Killarney, Baie Fine

We traveled the small craft route the last twenty miles of north Georgian Bay on Collins Inlet. The photo shows how magnificent the scenery was on the inlet.

Killarney is actually the beginning of the North Channel, Lake Huron, Ontario. This is a small, quaint fishing village. We moored right next to the famous Herbert's Fishery where we enjoyed fresh whitefish fish and chips. Whitefish, pickerel (Walleye), pike and muskie are popular fishes in the area.

The North Channel, a boater's paradise offers unmatched beauty with dense green forests and crystal clear water with countless scenic bays, islands and coves.
The setting is even more rural than the Georgian Bay and some of the exposed rocks date back to the formation of the earth.

Baie Fine (pronounced fin) is sometimes called Canada's fjord. The bay is 9 miles long with high walls of granite on either side with the "Pool" at the very top.
You can climb up to Topaz Lake for an awesome view. We easily found a cove to anchor in, all to ourselves, and enjoy the lovely scenery.

FedEx "did good" and delivered the new electric water pump to cool the generator that we needed. Little Current was a great two day stop, allowing Rich to do the install and for me to catch up on some laundry and grocery shopping. We met up with some cruising friends that we hadn't seen for a couple of months. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner and then some Hand and Foot (card game) after catching up with their cruising tales and comparing ours!