Ken and Karen’s travel adventures
8/6/18 Monday: It was nice and calm when we left the Kagawong marina. It was a cloudy day, which was surprising after being so hot yesterday! Although we did have that giant thunderstorm, Island Girl is still like a bug magnet! Bugs, bugs, everywhere bugs! And all the spider webs just add to the bug volume.
8/5/18 Sunday: Kagawong means “where mists rise from the falling waters” in the local Ojibwa language. We were going to go scope that out. SeaJamm pulled anchor around 8:00. That was a long process for them. Their windlass isn’t working, so Alan has to crank in the chain by hand, about 6 inches at a time. He’s going to have Popeye arms if he does that very often! We let them get a head start so we wouldn’t be in their way. Kenny took Stuart to shore, got the two 100’ shore lines untied, and I reeled them in. We put Stuart to bed in his cradle, then we pulled our anchor. It came up pretty clean, which was nice. And away we went! It was a little bit breezy and choppy today, but we only had about 15 miles to go to Kagawong. I had called yesterday to see about getting a slip reservation, but they said even though they were booked, we could stay on the outside of the wall. The wall is OK if there is no north wind, and it doesn’t have power. OK. Well, maybe we’ll just park on the wall for a few hours to go see the sights, then continue on to Gore Bay for tonight. Gore Bay is a big marina and they would have room. Read more
8/3/18: Bayliners UNITE!
Why is it that about every other day, the boat is just covered with these crazy bugs!? They don’t fly well, they are sluggish, and they are so fragile that they die if you look at them wrong. Kenny looked them up. They are mayflies. They all seem to be the same size, like an inch long or so. There doesn’t seem to be smaller baby ones. Maybe they all hatch at this size, mate, and die? I don’t know – but between these and a zillion dead gnats all over the boat, we have a pile of bugs to wash off! And I just did that yesterday!
8/2/18: There was a threat of thunderstorms today, so it sounded like nobody else was going to be leaving Little Current. It was only a 40% chance of scattered thunderstorms. We’ve seen this forecast so many times, and it has never materialized, so we decided to go ahead and move along. The Benjamin Islands are only about 20 miles from Little Current, so we didn’t need to hop out of bed very early to get going. And if you get to an anchoring spot too early, the people who were there the night before haven’t finished breakfast and moved on yet. So we had coffee, then walked up to the grocery store for a few items. We found stairs and a trail that took us right up to the store this time! That was way closer than walking up the road.
8/1/18: Did a song pop into your head? 😁 If so, you might be around my age. We woke up smelling smoke. Uh oh! Of course, being at anchor in the summer time, we sleep with the windows and hatch open for fresh air. This was a wood smoke we were smelling. At least it wasn’t the boat! When I got up and looked up the channel, there was definitely smoke on the water. Apparently the winds had shifted, and the smoke from the forest fires to the east of us was now blowing our direction. Dangit! It was pretty pungent, so we decided we would not stay here another night. Boo!
