7/21/18: Today was forecasted to be windy in the 15 mph + range, so we decided to stay put in our nice little Wani Bay cove. We’re pretty protected in here. There were eight boats here last night. Now it is Saturday, and we watched boat after boat come in and join us. By evening, we had 18 boats… 9 power, and 9 sail. Almost everybody just dropped a bow anchor to swing with the wind. There are just 4 that took out a stern anchor or tied to shore. At least they were near shore so they wouldn’t mess up anybody else’s swing dance!
It started out cloudy and warm. This is the scene from my chair on the back deck this morning.
We fired up Genny to charge up the batteries, and had a nice breakfast, utilizing left overs and a pile of maple flavored bacon. It’s a Canadian thing, eh?
It was a toasty day – in the 80’s, so we got some swimming and floating done. However I didn’t get any proof of that on my camera. The most excitement we had was a comedy of errors. Kenny & I were dressed, and Rick was all nice and dry in a shirt and swim shorts. Rocky was dry in her suit and nearly asleep on the swim step after swimming. Her drink cup fell off the transom and into the water, and woke her up. It is one of those hard plastic canning jar type, with a handle, lid and straw – so it was floating…. away in the wind. Rick told her to dive in an get it, and she looked at him like he was speaking Chinese. So he grabbed the boat pole with the hook on the end and tried to catch it, but that didn’t get it. It was floating farther and farther away. Kenny jumped in Stuart to go retrieve it, so I untied him and set him free. One problem there was that he didn’t have the lanyard thing to keep the engine running. So he had to hold the ‘go’ button the whole time with one hand, and steer with the other.
Meanwhile, Rick tried to get the water out of the boat pole. This is the one that Kenny lost the end handle to, so somehow, he popped the hook end off and it flew into the water and sank. Uh-OH! Rocky told him he had to go get it. So he grabbed the mask and snorkel and dove into the water to go down and find the hook. All the while, the stern of Island Girl is swinging in the wind, so “the location that we once was, wasn’t the location we currently was”. Kenny and Stuart retrieved the empty drink cup and puttered back to the boat—backwards, because driving with one hand and holding the go button with the other makes shifting or big corner steering a challenge. Rick was swimming around, diving down, and miraculously came back with the boat hook!! Fortunately part of it was silver and shiney so he could see it on the dark bottom, about 15’ down. He knew this from experience. He had already dropped his light gray shirt in the water and had to dive down to go get it. Thank goodness he is a good breath holder! Both items retrieved, Stuart tied back up, Rick back on board. Whew! Quite an adventure to add excitement to an otherwise quiet day!
We had fantabulous grilled steaks on the BBQ, with smashed taters and coleslaw. Wow that was good! After dinner, before it got too dark and buggy, we took a cocktail cruise around the bay. It was pretty peaceful. We only found one rock with the bottom of Stuart. Fortunately Stuart’s little motor was in ‘tip-up-mode’, so when the skag found bottom, the motor just tilted up quickly before the prop also found the rock (we hope).
And then a few rousing games of cribbage. Rocky & Kenny against Karen and Rick. Guess who won tonight? (Sorry Rick!) Victory is mine, says Captain Kenny!
It looks like we have some less than desirable weather coming our way. More wind, rain, and maybe even thunderousboomus. Time for more ABC planning. Plan A is to go to Henry’s Restaurant, which is famous for Great Lakes fish & chips… one of those iconic places on Georgian Bay that nobody should miss. They have overnight dockage, so we could stay there for a night. The problem is that it looks like two nights of yucky weather, and there is really nothing else at Henry’s. It’s just a restaurant on an island. Plan B takes us to Henry’s for lunch, then continue on to Perry Sound, which wasn’t even on my original itinerary of places to spend a night. It’s a village with a couple of marinas, which would be a good place to hide from the weather. And we could find restaurants, ice cream, and maybe a grocery store and do laundry. Plan C says go straight to Perry Sound, do not pass go, do not collect $200. And don’t stop for lunch either. We’ll see what it all looks like in the morning.