Jack Tar Adventures

link to today’s route: https://share.nebo.global/voyage/98263980-ac3c-4c92-89ea-de4ad9483e0b

July 24:  We spent another beautiful morning on the small craft channel for about an hour and a half before we ran outside in the open on Georgian Bay for another five hours.

When we got off the open bay and tucked in behind some islands, we found clusters of houses everywhere.

We arrived at a beautiful, serene anchorage in the Bustered Islands.  There were several other boats not only anchored but stern tied.  In other words, they had their anchor dropped off the bow of the boat and they also had a line tied from the stern of the boat to the shoreline around a rock or tree.  It prevents the boat from swinging around the anchor in the wind so more boats can fit.  As it was pretty windy we decided we had better do the same, but we were ill-prepared.  We didn’t have the kayak or paddle ready on the swim platform or my life jacket or the line we needed to tie up. So as Peter was struggling to keep the boat in place in the wind I was scrambling to get everything together to paddle out to shore.  It was like a scene from the Keystone Cops.  As I got to shore and tied the line around a rock, the anchor chain jammed and Peter had to leave the end of the line on the boat unattended.  So the inevitable happened and his end fell in the water.  I pulled all the line back in to shore but lost the spool in the process.  Meanwhile the other boats in the cove watched us embarass ourselves. We ended up aborting our first stern tie attempt ever and found another spot where there was plenty of room to swing. But first Peter had to get the anchor chain unjammed.  The second spot we dropped anchor was  actually much better as it was more private and had a lovely outlook into the main bay.

July 25:  After debriefing about everything that went wrong the day before, we had much better luck stern tying.  We didn’t strictly need to, but we thought it would be a good idea to practice.

I took a paddle around in some tiny coves where only the kayak would fit, sometimes with only a couple inches of water between the bottom of the kayak and the rock.