Terrain, Trees, Rocks and Green...snake

Had the weather apps we checked first thing this morning suggested that the days's wind would be 10 to 15, gusting a bit higher and more or less on the beam, we would have stayed right where we were. But they didn't. So we didn't. What they actually suggested was a bit of wind in the morning then light and diminishing throughout the day.

The forecast that was, wasn't.

The forecast that wasn't, was.

But that didn't become obvious until we were well under way. Still, though the channel waters varied between being lightly peppered with white caps to pretty heavily salted with same, the ride wasn't all that bad. The original destination anchorage was a place called Thessalon, 26 miles and about 4 hours away. Our arrival time was around1300 hours but, seeing as the ride wasn't terrible I wanted to cover a few more miles if possible. Tomorrow's route was almost 7 hours long as planned and  landed us at a dock for a couple of days. There we are going to indulge in a side excursion. (More on that after we actually do it.)

Deb allowed that going on for a while would be okay and found a string of anchorages where we could stop when the day was long enough. The first one was about 20 miles and 3 hours away, a little cove near a place called Hole in the Wall. (Honest. I wonder how may Hole in the Walls there are in the world?) We pulled off the route, checked it out, and that is were we are for tonight.

Of course being on anchor means that the generator has to be started. Deb tried to get it going from the switch in the power panel but, nothing. When climbing in and out of the engine hole we occasionally bump the remote control switch to "off". She crawled down into the hole from the front access under the stairs, found the switch was on, but started the generator from below.  Not sure what is going on with it so, another problem that will need to be fixed. 

While crawling out of the hole she found that a little green snake had taken up residence onboard First Light. After informing me that we had a stowaway she asked what she should do and, of course, I said, "Kill the thing." But Deb is a much better person than I am. Instead of dispatching it to snake heaven she tossed a rag over it while I got her a jar. She got the little critter into the jar and handed it to me. It was kind of a cute little bugger so killing it might have been a bit of an over reaction. I tossed it overboard figuring it could swim. And swim it did, heading off toward shore as if it knew where it was. So that was something new. (Ed note: no photos of this as I was trying desperately to keep the thing from crawling into some crevice from which I couldn't extricate it.)

In complete defiance of the weather forecasts, the wind is now rattling the tops of the trees and the boat is back to swinging like a wind vane. Protected as we are with little fetch, I am glad we pulled in when we did. Tomorrow's weather calls for winds light to variable. Ahh...yeah. Still, the laws of Probability and Statistics suggest that they have to get it right once in a while.

This is yet another pretty place tucked into the terrain with trees, rocks, and pretty green water. (The green snake we apparently brought with us.) We have been several weeks now in the midst of places just like this one. Truth is, it is all starting to look pretty much the same. Which is part of the reason for our little side excursion. Once we leave there we will be heading south, west, and south some more. For the first time on this trip, the bow will be pointed, more or less, toward St. Louis. It has been months. It is starting to get cold in these parts. It is time to be heading south. And home.

The Captain hard at work. And, yes, we need to work on some kind of cushion extension

so you can see out better.

The water here is almost as pretty as the Bahamas

A rather plain sunset this evening.

Only 3 more days to fly this flag then back to the old Stars & Stripes

A two cup day two days in a row

The winds blew harder out of the north today than they did yesterday. Thus it was a really good day to be tied up with a breakwater off our stern and buildings, trees, and a hill off our bow. Even with that, all of the boats are swaying in the slips, lines creaking and flags flapping. There are some discrepancies between the various weather apps as to when the winds will abate. At the moment, the thought is we might be able to get back underway tomorrow mid morning. But we will not know for sure until the morning forecasts can be reviewed.

We took a longish walk into town to do a little provisioning. It was actually chilly bordering on down right cold in the gusts. Most of us Americans were wearing jackets and hats. The Canadians? They were in short pants and shirts. I guess they are used to the cold.

This close to crossing the border, care should be taken to buy what is needed without buying what will not be eaten yet but cannot be taken across the border when the time comes. That time should come somewhere in the next week or so depending, of course, on the weather. We are getting toward the end of this phase of the loop. A side trip to Sault Ste. Marie to take a train ride into the mountains is one last excursion. Soon after that, we will be tackling the two hundred plus miles of Lake Michigan. That should be interesting.

Terrible photo of the Blue Super Moon.

It was too cold and windy to stay out long enough to get a good one!

Another 2-cup day

This was a day on the dock sitting out the winds. They showed, but were not as stiff as was suggested. Still, they were stiff enough that being on the dock was fine with us. Deb put in some serious work today defrosting both freezers and cleaning up the flybridge plastic windows and floor. We spend a lot of time in that area and it was showing. I didn't do much of anything boat related. But I did catch up on my online music lessons. We have been off the grid enough this week that I had fallen several days behind. And there was a motorcycle race to catch seeing that we actually have connectivity. Though, as seems to be pretty common, the marina wi-fi isn't working. I think that means we are sucking up roaming data, but I'm not sure.

We took a bit of an excursion to a nearby camp of some sort that has walking trails. We didn't get too far along the trail before it became obvious that forgetting the bug spray was a bad idea. The little buggers swarmed us as soon as we got deep enough into the woods that the wind was blocked. We turned around and headed back to the marina. We did get a look at an old lumber mill that was once the focus of the town. Some of the machines they used back then to move and stack the lumber were on a very modest kind of display. I think it safe to assume that the injury rate among the workers must have been atrocious.

One of the machines that carried stacks of lumber.

This machine stacked the boards

We did have a few minutes of excitement later in the afternoon. The marina crew had directed a sailboat to take the spot next to us in the slip. The captain turned his bow in and it was immediately obvious he wasn't going to make it. I moved into the cockpit to try and fend him off. But there was no need. The Captain hit reverse, backed away while still missing the breakwater close at hand. He then informed the marina dock hands that he wasn't going to try again as it was just too tight with too much wind. He instructed them that he would be taking a space on the face dock instead. Which he did. It was exactly what I should have done back in the marina at the rail lift.

We will likely be here at least one more day waiting out a bit more wind. From chatting around, it seems that most of the crews around us have come to the same conclusion. No one that I saw left today. The only boat that came in was the sailboat. Moving here to wait out the wind was definitely the right choice, brain glitch or not.

There was an awesome mural display on the side of the lumber yard building.

As these lands are native lands, most of the paintings are native themed.

A wetlands conservation project near the marina. Home to some river otters...

and lots and lots of mosquitos.

There was a big sign at the head of this trail: "You are in bear country".

They didn't mention the mosquitos which will eat you just as well as the bear...

Brain glitch

I was doing my normal last check of the boat before crawling into the berth for the night. I was careful walking around the deck as it was just short of being absolutely dark. Moon and starlight barely managed to lighten the cloud cover just enough to distinguish it from the surrounding terrain. Once upon a time such a scene would have suited me just fine. But all I could think was, if the Billy Thorpe song unfolded and everyone on the earth had been whisked away except Deb and I? What I was seeing would look exactly the same. Other than First Light's anchor light, there was zero evidence that humankind had ever walked the earth. (If you catch the song reference you are giving away your age.) I shrugged it off as still being a bit rough around the edges after the last couple of days, crawled into the berth, and fell into a fitful sleep.

This morning, I woke up to nearly clear skies and just about zero wind. The rain that had been expected overnight never showed. What I saw in the sky and on the current weather and short range forecast suggested it would be a near perfect day to move some miles. The ugly would not start until tonight and going into tomorrow and Monday. Sure we could sit where we were without issue, which was the plan all along and certainly the most conservative and safe choice. But then my brain glitched.

As pretty and as quiet as Cameron Bight was, all I wanted to do was get moving. For the next hour or so Deb and I had an intense discussion. If we did move, where would we go? Contrary to what we had been told, good anchorages are not that easy to find in these parts. The information about them, garnered from an assortment of different guides and chart notes, often conflicts in unsettling ways. Easy access vs be-careful-of-rocks entries. Good holding vs questionable holding vs anchors lost to rocks holding. Protected vs not so well protected. Deep enough vs might not be deep enough vs way too deep. This trip has already been a circus of near disaster touted as an "adventure". We have listened on the VHF as boats have been on rocks, one holed and nearly sunk. Props have been shattered. Charts are unreliable. And we nearly lost First Light and luckily escaped injury in the railroad lift. The thing we cannot do is damage the boat. Poking into an unknown and questionable anchorage with weather closing in? Not the best idea I've ever had.

With the weather's main attraction being 20 knot winds blowing in on Sunday into Monday, bringing scattered thunderstorms with them, a good place to anchor was a must have. Much discussion  ensued but no good answer was found. But my brain was still glitched. I did not want to spend two or three more nights where we were. So Deb went into full-on make-it-happen mode and suggested Blind River Marine Park as a possible destination. It had a review that suggested it was kind of shallow for First Light. Deb gave them a call, was assured that we would be fine and yes, they had room.

Winds were not an issue for today but rain? That was another issue. The forecast suggested showers, some kind of heavy, to arrive right at the end of our four-hour trip time. My look at the sky, and what I saw of the radar forecast, suggested that was somewhat pessimistic. Deb allowed that docking in the rain wouldn't be an issue as long as it didn't come with a bunch of wind. We have been wet before. And if a storm did pop up out of nowhere? We would button up, go below, and just jog it out in open water bow into the wind. Something we did several times in Kintala. Deb made the reservation and, even though I think she was having a bit more misgivings about changing the plan on such short notice than she would admit, we pulled up the anchor and headed out.

When it comes to weather guessing, sometimes I get it right. First Light's radar was painting a band of light showers that never approached closer than eight miles. The ride was smooth, the navigation easy, and we pulled onto the dock without a drop being dropped on us. The marina isn't that expensive. The docks are new.  The folks here are helpful and friendly. We are tucked in behind a breakwater that is about two boat lengths behind us. Our bow is pointing almost due North, the direction from which the worst of the winds are forecasted to blow. Thanks to Deb coming up with a good alternate and agreeing to give it a try we are one travel day ahead of where we were.

 And my brain is un-glitched.

I sure love living on a boat...

We were pretty sure that there would be no traveling today and, being as beat up as we were, we made no effort to get up and get going at first light. As I walked down the dock to the public head I got to looking at the sky. It was grey with a cloud train flowing right along the river, maybe a couple of thousand feet in the air, and in the same direction as we would be going if we left. Mmm...cloud trains usually mean some weather is inbound. But the direction of the wind wouldn't be a bad point of sail. If we didn't plan to go too far?

The dock at Little Current with a very large tow/barge going by.

 

When I got back to the boat, Deb was pouring over the weather forecasts including Windy, Pocket Gribs, and Weather Mate. Though they didn't align perfectly they all suggested that the rain showers wouldn't arrive for at least another four hours and any thunderstorms would be tomorrow's problem. The King's Point anchorage was 3+30 and 23.3 miles further along than where we were. It would be well protected from the incoming weather. Perhaps even better than the dock we were on. She suggested we think about going. I suggested we go. We have the departure routine down pat and First Light was pulling away from the wall a few minutes before 0800.

The ride was exactly what I expected it to be given the cloud train. Not perfect but smooth enough that the autopilot handled about half of the trip. It was cloudy with showers around. One caught up with us just as we entered the narrowest channel of the trip, which was about 0.75 NM from the anchorage. Not hard rain, just enough to be annoying. And it arrived without any wind. Out of the channel we made the 180 turn around King Point and into Cameron Bight. I slowed to a bare crawl into the Bight with Deb standing watch at the bow.

The information we had was that the sounding was questionable and there was the possibility of unmarked rocks. (Yes, she was out in the rain while I was up in the flybridge. But the canvas on our flybridge leaks like a screen. I got nearly as wet.)

We didn't see, or bump into, any unmarked rocks, though there were a couple that we avoided. We coasted about two thirds of the way in, dropped the hook, set it as hard as we could, and put out enough rode for the expected winds. It is likely we will not feel the winds much. There is only a single narrow slot of open water with nothing blocking the wind,  and it lay on a heading nearly 180 degrees from where the hardest winds are forecasted to blow.

We are the only boat here. The rain is now steady and the visibility maybe a fuzzy mile or so. All indications are that we are the only boat within miles of here. Unless someone shows up in the next couple of hours, I suspect we will be the only boat here for however long it takes for the weather to pass. That looks like Monday at the earliest, more likely Tuesday. But today is now a travel day rather than a sitting day. And where we ended up sitting is both a very pretty place and isn't costing us any doubloons. Something that is hard to accomplish in today's world... unless you happen to love living on a boat.

 

It was just what I needed to get over the slog that was yesterday's living on a boat. 

Oh I so hate boats...

Those were the words wafting out of the engine room as Tim set about to change the oil in both engines and the generator. I'm sure he'll have his story to tell later but, for now, suffice it to say that I was feeling a bit guilty about dragging him into this all those years ago. He sent me off to the library, where I sit now, so I could publish the blog posts from the last three days where we had no internet. So, until he regales you with his mechanical woes, enjoy a few photos from this morning.

The park 10 feet from our boat is lit up at night. This is an extremely cool place.

This is what a boat undergoing an oil change looks like...

A very cool mural on my walk to the library. This is Native American land.