The Georgian Bay

 August 17

The Georgian Bay

Trouble in paradise!  My Admiral, Personal Chef, Barber, and all around wench is now refusing to take my orders!  All I did was ask her to start the engine....

Well, if you aren't smiling now .....

There was this sense of depression leaving the Trent Severn Waterway because its beauty and wonders were so captivating that you never want it to stop.  I assume most Canadians feel this way annually as they have to put their boats up for the season.  This turned out to be unfounded for as great as that was, the Georgian Bay was even more so.  We have now spent 10 days here and it seems like 10 minutes.

To orient you, here is the Nebo log since August 6th showing our route.

So what is the Georgian Bay.  I am (again) going to steal (errr ... quote) from Wiki:

Georgian Bay is about 190 kilometres (120 mi) long by 80 kilometres (50 mi) wide.^[3] It covers approximately 15,000 square kilometres (5,800 sq mi), making it nearly 80% the size of Lake Ontario.^[4][5]

Eastern Georgian Bay is part of the southern edge of the Canadian Shield, granite bedrock exposed by the glaciers at the end of the last ice age, about 11,000 years ago. The granite rock formations and windswept eastern white pine are characteristic of the islands and much of the shoreline of the bay. The rugged beauty of the area inspired landscapes by artists of the Group of Seven. The western part of the bay, from Collingwood north, and including Manitoulin, Drummond, Cockburn and St. Joseph islands, borders the Niagara Escarpment. Because of its size and narrowness of the straits joining it with the rest of Lake Huron, which is analogous to if not as pronounced as the separation of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan,^[6] Georgian Bay is sometimes called the "sixth Great Lake".^[7]

 

Lang Hindle

It is HUGE with so much to explore.  Were to start????  We got extremely fortunate at Port Severn, the beginning of Georgian Bay adventure, when we met an amazing man named Lang Hindle.  My first impression of Lang was that of a kind, generous older man with a true passion for the water.  I came to find out that Lang is a Canadian legend in the world of motorcycle racing.  Rather than try to sound it all out here, take a look at this link: Lang Hindle.  Imagine someone of this caliber walking up to your boat and outlining a trip through the unknown for you.  THEN ... he gave Terri his charts with the only expectation being that we would pay it forward to someone else.  What an amazing man.  He now calls us periodically to see if he can help further.

Georgian Bay

As you can see from the Nebo log above, we played on the North shore of the bay.  This is what is referred to as the "Small Craft Channel".  On the extreme positive side, it was a picturesque perfect as could be.  Much of the waterway appeared as it did 500 years ago being largely untouched by man.  There were so many times Terri and I said "can you believe this" or "Oh my gosh, look at that".  It went on and on for days.

We anchored out five of the nights at different places like Leith Island, the Bustards and Collins Inlet.  Traveling through the waterways to reach these locations was clear water dotted with small islands lined with pink rock cliffs.  We have countless pictures, but to pull just a few:

With this section of the trip, the dingy (aka, Little Buddy) is getting a lot of use getting Yudee ashore, docktails on other boats and to go fishing (no, I didn't catch a dang thing).  FYI:  Atillio was very proud of his catch.

Now for the rest of the story.  Traveling through these waterways was some of the most technical, difficult and precise driving, navigating and teamwork we have experienced.  You don't dare stray 5 feet out of the channel for fear of losing your hull, propellers and potentially worse.  There were several times I would ask Terri; "The channel markers disappeared, do you see any" and she would point to the left or right and say "is that it back there?".  FULL STOP!  Reverse, reverse, reverse!!!!  The channel did a hard right behind an island and I missed it.  

The Georgian Bay has some 30,000 islands in it and they are all rock.  Some of the islands disappear in high water levels and lurk 1 foot under the water.  The channel in places is less than 30 feet wide.  Here is a screen print of the navigation software .  I just grabbed a small segment of this but we did ~150 miles of this intense driving.

Everyone of those triangles is a marked danger point. In the middle you can see a sharp left turn but from the water it appears to go straight.  Never Home took a great video going through some of this.  You can even see how close the markers are.

Never Home also took a great video when out on the dingy showing how difficult the bottom is.  They have an electric motor for their dingy so that is why it is so quiet.  

So now we are nestled into a marina in Killarney ON as a storm passes.  Terri had a gorgeous hike over the rocky terrain to the lighthouse. The view out onto the bay showed 7 foot seas.  So glad to be hunkered down. The Georgian Bay was a treat beyond measure.  If you can believe it, the next segment (the North Channel) is supposed to be even better!  Yea!

Here are some parting shots for you....

Yudee is doing just fine!

The trip remains the height of socialization.

And the beauty of our current playground is breath taking.

And to really try to capture how cool everything is, here is a drone video of our anchorage at Collin's Inlet.  I suggest you view it in full screen. (On a sad note, it appears that my drone looked into the sun and lost it's video sensor.  It can still take still photos, but the videos are all washed out.  This might be the last one.)

Stay safe!

With Love,

Terri and Aubrey

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(Obviously an error on the max MPH).