Monday: Gore Bay Marina

Since leaving Little Current on Sunday, we spent 2 days at anchor and visited 2 towns - Kagawong and Gore Bay (both on Manitoulin Island).

Bell Cove anchorage Thursday night

We've often seen shorelines like the one on the left in Bell Cove but could never figure out how the trees got to be such a uniform height. Turns out that during the winter when the water is frozen, the deer eat the trees along the shoreline and that is as high as they can reach! Makes sense to me :-)

East Rouse Island anchorage Friday night - better know as Sleepless in the North Channel - we woke up at 2:30 in the morning with the wind blowing quite hard. The anchors held but the night was not without it's worries. The up side was the stars were out in force - as they often are up here where this is little ambient lighting. Reminds me of Lake Powell at night when we were on Tom's pontoon boat with Mom. It's almost hard to believe there could be that many stars!

The days were not without work though. Steve repaired the lazarette hatch cover (which was splitting and needed reglueing) while I reattached the shelf in the front cabin. Near as I can figure, it was a casualty of our Lake Ontario crossing but just never noticed. How anyone thought two screws would be sufficient is beyond me so I replaced these with bolts instead.

Saturday we went on to the very small town of Kagawong - once again against the wind and waves. It was nice to be tied to a dock after the last night at anchor. There was a fun waterfalls, a great stop for lunch and a large outdoor chess set (we thought of you, Jim!).

A visit to the local museum - more antique outboard motors - and the church by the dock that had lots of boating items incorporated into the furnishings! This is also where we learned about Daniel Dodge - one of the Dodge car heirs - who scandalously married a local gal from Gore Bay and was seriously injured playing with dynamite at his home here on Manitoulin Island. In trying to transport him by boat back to Little Current, he fell overboard and was killed. They were married a very short period of time and his wife ended up with quite the inheritance. Anyway, it was interesting.

Spider webs and fog greeted us in the morning. You can just barely make out a sailboat at anchor toward the right side of the picture. It burned off by mid-morning so we were able to head out for Gore Bay - which is where we are now. Very windy - we'll stay another night and hopefully be able to take off tomorrow.