| Winter | May 24 Weekend | Canada Day |
| Parry Sound Trip | The Rest of the Summer |
The boating season started off a bit earlier this year and it was about mid February when we got a call that the snow on the boat needed to be looked at. Early on a Saturday morning I packed a few shovels in the back of the car and headed up to Penetang. As you can see there was a fair bit of snow. The picture shows the stern with about three feet of snow and it took me about an hour to clear it all off, plus the two hour drive up and the two hour drive back.
The May 24th weekend was again the un-official start of the summer. This year Kathy was working
the entire weekend so Gord and Stephanie (Mr. Potato and Tater tot) joined us. The weekend ended
up being one of our driest May 24th weekends in years and as you can see, we have the girls with
their yearly picture at the welcome gate. We’ve decided to make sure we do this at the beginning
of each year so we can compare them from year to year.
The weekend was full of hikes. We did the usual trip out to Kitchi’s chair and then continued on to Thumb Point. On the way up to the point the trail goes right through a swampy area and a boardwalk was built to make the trip easier and reduce the impact to the natural environment.
On the way out the girls found a very large (now empty) egg shell. We had a good look at it an figured it must be from a Canada Goose. However, Alex figured it was probably a Swan egg. Gord and I doubted this but we kept it to ourselves because neither of us had ever seen or heard of a wild swan. When we got to Thumb Point Gord spotted a rather large white bird out in the water. We pulled out the binoculars, had a good look and sure enough it was a swan. Still not quite sure of what we were seeing, we looked up in our Ontario bird book and compared both what we were seeing and the shell the girls found. The shell ended up being too large to be a Canada Goose egg and what we were actually looking at was a Tundra Swan.
The girls love playing on the beach and so Gord and I decided to sacrifice everything that
we wanted to do and instead we sat on the beach and had a drink or three (what caring fathers).
Although we had a very dry weekend, it was also very windy and as you can
see by the picture, the wind kept the boat off the dock for the entire weekend.
On Sunday while the girls were playing at the beach I asked Alex to bring back the net bag which
they use to put all their sand toys into. When she brought this I filled it with beer and cokes,
tied it to a rope and threw it over the side.
Alex, being inquisitive about everything didn’t understand what was going on and asked what we were doing. Not being the type of person that just gives the answer I asked her why they weren’t in swimming this weekend and about halfway through her answer of “it’s too cold” she said ohhhhh I understand. This is one of the downsides of being out on the first weekend of the year; access to ice is somewhat limited, but the resourceful will not have a problem.
This year for Canada day Kathy was working again so Gord and Stevie came up to the boat with us. It was just a regular weekend for us; we went for hikes, the girls played on the beach, fished off the dock, Gord had a three hour nap and we sat around the fire at night.
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This year we decided to go back to Parry Sound for our two week summer vacation. When we asked
the girls they just kept going on about how much fun they had last year. This time we decided
to leave early on the Saturday morning and try going up the east side of the Giant's Tomb and
tuck in at O’Donnell Point at the entrance to Twelve Mile Bay. This time the weather and wind
agreed with us and we motor sailed all the way up to Henry’s Fish restaurant and pulled in
about 2:30.
The great guys at Henry’s managed to squeeze us in to an overnight spot right
next to where the float planes pull up to drop off dinner guests. We tied up behind some nice
people from Lake Simcoe in a Catalina 380 called Inukshuk whose kids were swimming in the
clearest water I’ve ever seen in Georgian Bay. It was over 20 feet deep and crystal clear.
We only had about a two hour trip up to Kilcoursie so we took our time leaving in the morning. As it turns out we weren’t paying enough attention to where we were going and as I heard Alex mentioning she could see the bottom I realized we were off course. I quickly backed off on the throttle and heard a loud thump as we came to a complete stop.
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We stayed the next three days anchored in Kilcoursie Bay and spent the time going on hikes
through the park, swimming and relaxing on the beach. We also met up with a friend of Kathy's
(Pieter) from work who happened to be in the park camping with his wife and daughter. They dropped
by for a visit and even drove out of the park to grab us a few bags of ice. The same trip would
take me an hour by dingy, so we were rather grateful. We managed to take another dingy ride over
to Scott Island for some exploring and swiming and then headed over to Harold's point where Alex
got up the nerve to jump of the cliffs.
After three days we started the engine and got ready to pull up anchor and head into Parry Soun., However something didn’t sound right so I took a quick look over the stern and didn’t see any water coming out of the exhaust which meant the engine wasn't being cooled. Well, we had a problem, so I went about trying to find out what it was. After about 30 minutes of thinking and investigating I determined the impeller was shot, so lucky enough I had a spare and it only took me another 30 minutes upside down to replace it and then we were off to Parry Sound.
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Well now that we were back in Parry Sound the girls had to visit the Bay Street café and
since they serve
Creemore
I was more than happy to oblige. We had planned to be in Parry Sound
for the August long weekend to be able to stock up and spend some time in the town. Well as it
turned out we happened to be there for the hottest weekend of the year. Usually when you are on
the water, even the hottest days aren’t that bad. This was the exception and the heat was bad
enough that we all jumped into the water at the marina. As a general rule you would not usually
go swimming in a Marina, but this being a transient marina it’s a lot cleaner than most.
We brought the girl’s bikes up and Emma was just learning to ride so we went up to the trail
and headed out to the public beach. Emma was having a few problems with her steering and every time
we got close to a lamp post Emma would head off the path and head straight towards the post.
The next day we headed off to visit the fire tower and after a few tries, double backs and a
little help we eventually managed to find it. It was an open structure with a few hundred
stairs that went up a couple hundred feet. I was quite surprised that neither of the girls
had a problem with the height, however the view was spectacular and you could see for miles
in any direction.
We were about to leave Parry Sound when we got a call from Mike and Ruth. They were
on their way back from the North Channel and were anchored in Killcoursie. We let them know
that we were just heading out and would meet them in a couple of hours.
We arrived just as the wind was picking up and we seemed to have a rather difficult time anchoring. It took a number of tries but we finally got a good hold about 100 feet from Beaujolais.
We stayed a couple more days before heading back and of course stopped at Henry’s for lunch. After lunch we continued back along the inside channel and as we passed O’Donnell Point the wind was on the nose so we decided to continue on and pulled in behind Starr Island for the night. The next day the weather was great, the wind was in the right direction and the water was calm but we were on the inside passage, so we spent a couple of hours motoring down to the Musquash channel and headed out of the inside passage. We had a great sail down past The Giant’s Tomb and back to the marina (if we had waited another day at Killcoursie we would have had a great sail the whole way down, Oh well).
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