Monday, July 9, 2001

I embarked on Friday, July 6^th at 3:30 pm. It felt more like en-arked. I was precisely 30.5 hrs behind schedule and it felt like I had been loading the boat for days - because I had. She is sitting at least an inch lower in the water for all 900 lbs. or so of equipment and supplies I put aboard. It was as though all that was left was to load the animals two by two. In fact I did load two animals: myself and my cat, Chester.

My friend Paul and I took Chester for a cruise to Peche Island before my departure to test her for seaworthiness . She was duly unimpressed. So much so, that she filled her protest, in the form of all three excretions a cat can make, on my bunk. This was not an auspicious sign. To top things off, the following day a sailor from my sailing club died in a tragic sailboat racing accident on Lake Huron. I was really starting to wonder what the hell I was thinking to be single handing a boat up one of the largest lakes in the World.

Halfway across Lake St. Clair, a half hour after departing, the wind came up and I hoisted the sails and cut the engine. There was this ecstatically beautiful silence. The only sound was the tickle of water flowing along the hull. It felt as though it was the sound of the tension physically flowing out of my body. I knew then exactly what it was that I had been thinking.

After spending the night in Chanel Ecarte, I proceeded up the St. Clair River to Sarnia. The darnedest thing happened: I was able to sail up the river! In all the times I have gone up that river I don’t ever recall sailing. The wind was directly behind me so I sailed wing-on-wing, with one sail stretched out on either side of the boat like some sort of giant seagull.

I had planned to spend Sunday in Sarnia trying to find Alexander Mackenzie’s grave. He was Canada's second Prime Minister and the stone mason who built one of our the few historical buildings that the City of Windsor has yet bulldoze: Mackenzie Hall. Years ago while I was in Sarnia doing an Ontario Ministry of the Environment Survey of the St. Clair River, I saw a plaque along the waterfront stating that Mackenzie was buried in on of Sarnia’s cemeteries. Being a hard core nerd, I thought it would be interesting to check out.

Windsong had other plans. An hour before I arrived in Sarnia, I completely ran out of power in one of my two batteries. That shouldn’t have happened. Saturday night I ran the engine for two hours to try to charge the battery. In the morning it still had no charge. After another hour of running the engine, I pronounced the battery dead. It was a good ten years old so it didn’t owe me anything. It just would have been far more polite if it had died back home. I had also found that the end of my whisker pole (long skinny pole for holding sails out) was trying to wiggle its way off. I knew exactly how to fix it but I didn’t have the tools I needed on board. I laughed at myself for a half hour. I’ve always thought of myself as the Al Boreland or Bob Vila of the seas and here I was without the right tools for the job.

Fortunately, I had some friends in Sarnia. George Ayers and his fiancé Jackie were living aboard their Niagara 35, Heritage, at the Sarnia Yacht club. Jackie was kind enough to drive me to Canadian Tire where I was able to get both a battery and the right tools to fix my whisker pole.

It turned out I knew even more people in Sarnia than I thought. I also ran into Craig Noakes and the Baker boys (all sailing instructors from South Port) who were racing in a Laser regatta and former South Porter Gill Fleming who now sails out of Sarnia.

Sarnia was to provide one more adventure. Just as I returned to Windsong to turn in for the night a call came over the radio, "PAN-PAN, PAN-PAN, PAN-PAN. This is Sarnia Coast Guard Radio. We have a report of a person in the water under the Blue Water Bridge. Persons on shore have been unsuccessfully attempting to throw a line to the person. Would all mariners in the area please respond."

After a minute no one had responded so I decided it was up to me. I hailed Sarnia Coast Guard and informed them I could be on scene in five minutes in my dingy but I would be unable to maintain radio contact because I don’t have hand held VHF radio. Sarnia Coast Guard provided me with location details and asked that I head to the scene. I was quickly hailed by a Coast Guard auxiliary volunteer who was in the apartment beside the harbour. He had a handheld VHF and asked that I pick him up at the dock and bring him with me.

When I arrived to pick him up the Coast Guard guy took one look at my intrepid little craft and said, "Is this thing going to make it?" I assured him that she would do 16 knots with two people aboard and with much skepticism he boarded and my 9ft. rubber dingy was magically transformed into Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary 22. When we got out on the lake, the Coast Guard guy seemed pretty impressed at how much horsepower my little dingy actually had, but he kept telling my about their nice big steel hulled Coast Guard Auxiliary Vessel that was in the shop having engine work done. We bounced our way to the river mouth and once we got into the smooth water of the river, Sarnia Coast Guard hailed us to say that the PIW (person in water) had been rescued.

That was what I figured would happen, but I couldn’t just sit there while no one responded. And heck, it doesn’t take much of an excuse to send me off on an adventure.

Friday, July 27, 2001

It seems that digital cell phone signals are truly few and far between. It has been 19 days since I left Sarnia and I haven’t seen a single one.

A lot has happened since then. My trip up the lake went pretty smoothly. From Sarnia I sailed to Harbor Beach and then on to Harrisville. Both days were nearly calm and both harbours had places where I could anchor out. The last leg to Alpena got a little rough. It was blowing 20-25 knots from the northwest. Things were pretty calm until I rounded the corner into Thunder Bay. Suddenly, the waves had 8 miles of fetch and quickly built to three to four feet. The entire boat shuddered as she crashed into wave after wave. There was nothing to do but hold on for the next hour until I was close enough to shore for things to calm down. The big question was how Chester was dealing with it. I saw her move aft from her favourite hiding place in my bunk and jump up into a shelf in the main salon. "Smart cat," I thought. She moved aft to where the boat’s motion was less pronounced.

Upon arrival in Alpena I discovered that the rough seas had literally scared the piss out of poor Chester. Fortunately, both of her accidents had occurred in places that were really easy to clean up. Alpena was a really friendly place. They kicked me out of the municipal harbour because they do no allow anchoring despite the excellent holding ground and ample room. No matter, I found a much nicer anchorage about a mile away and dingied into town. I spent two days there awaiting the arrival of G.I. Joe De La Franier who was to be my cruising partner and dive buddy for the next ten days.

In my dingy adventures I discovered the town dock up the river where we could tie up for free. I also nearly got blown out of the water. There was an outfall marked on the chart off of the peninsula I had to round to get to town. I had always thought outfall meant exactly that, the effluent flowed down or at least horizontally. I was to discover otherwise. I was screaming around the point at 17 knots when ‘GOOSH!!!’ a huge blast of water shot ten feet into the air not six feet off my port side! It was as though I had triggered a mine! I quickly altered course to starboard, then ‘GOOSH!’ a second bast shot up just the left of the first one. Six feet to the left, and instead of getting the heck scared out of me, I would have been barrel rolling through the air! I gave that outfall a huge berth from then on.

Joe and I spent two days in Alpena diving two of Cris Kohl’s 100 Best Great Lakes Shipwrecks (A.K.A. Cris Kohl’s top 100). He doesn’t lie. If they are in that book they are really nice dives. The first was the Grecian, a 296 foot steel hulled freighter who sank in 100 feet of water when a patch from a previous grounding let go. She was only the second steel ship I had ever dove, and the most intact. The superstructure was gone but the deck and sides were still intact. Next was the Montana, a 236 foot wooden steamer who burned in 75 feet of water on her way into Alpena. All of the superstructure had burned off but you could see the huge wooden arches that were typically used to stiffen the hulls of wooden ships of this length. We also saw her huge four bladed propeller, massive boiler and 40 foot tall engine! We also dove a third wreck called the Oscar T. Flint.

From there we headed to Presque Isle (pronounced presk-eel). On the way we dove another of Cris Kohl’s top 100: the Nordmeer, a 470 foot steel freighter that went the wrong side of a mark and ran aground in 30 feet of water. The most remarkable thing about the Nordmeer was how mangled she was. The only parts I could identify were the stern, the boiler, and the engine. Next time you see a salty freighter steaming along the Detroit River, try to imagine a force that could reduce that ship to tinfoil, and you will have some idea of what a winter storm on Lake Huron is like.

On the way to Presque Isle, we were amused at how completely ignorant many boaters are of the French language. We heard many boats hailing over the ship to shore radio, "Presque Isle Isle Marina." (pronouncing it presk-eel ile). They seemed to have no clue that they were saying, "Almost an Island Island Marina".

From Presque Isle we sailed through a rainy miserable day to St. Ignace. On the way we dunked the DRS (large colourful sail for sailing downwind in light winds) in the lake twice. The first time was when the shackle on the halyard popped open, unceremoniously dropping the sail in the water. We hauled it aboard and sent it back up on another halyard. Then the wind started building, and Winston, the autopilot, couldn’t keep the boat under control, so I took over. It soon became obvious that it was getting too windy for the sail and we had to get it down. I handed the helm back to Winston who immediately broached (lost control of the boat in a very unpleasant and dangerous way). Instead of taking the time to try to get the DRS down dry while risking doing some serious damage to the vessel and crew, I just ran the halyard and dropped it in the lake. This was not too bad. It just required hanging the DRS up to dry some time when it was less windy, and going up the mast to pull one halyard down and to re-run the second. But the day was not over yet. As we were dropping the mainsail on the way into St. Ignace, the mainsheet caught my Harken Speedball winch handle (the finest winch handle money can buy, and a gift from my sister) and flung it over the side. I nearly cried! Then I looked at the depth sounder. 30 feet! We can recover it! I dove for the GPS and marked the spot. But day was not over yet. When we got into harbour I discovered that Chester had filed another protest on my bunk.

I was furious! I needed a permanent way to stop this cat from despoiling my bunk. I was fairly certain that tethering her to the anchor for the night would cure the problem, but Joe, the cat expert, had a more humane solution which also allowed for me to continue to enjoy her companionship. He suggested that I use the method he uses to transport his Persian showcats to cat shows. He found a cat carrier for me to purchased in the local hardware store and a Tupperware dish that would fit across the back to act as her kitty litter. Now I simply stow the cat behind bars for all passages. This has two added advantages: One, she is forced to remain at the ship’s centre of gravity during passages so she no longer gets sick or loses bladder control; and Two, she can no longer kick her kitty litter all over my carpet.

We spent several days in St. Ignace, cleaning bunks, fixing halyards, drying sails, recovering winch handles, talking to Racers who had just finished the Chicago to Mackinac race, and diving two more of Cris Kohl’s top 100.

We first headed out to the Maitland but the mooring was missing. It is rather difficult to find an unmarked wreck in 80 feet of water and even more difficult to anchor in 80 feet of water so we headed to the Northwest instead. It wasn’t one of the top 100, but a nice dive. Then we dove the Sandusky, a 110 foot wooden brig who foundered in a storm in 80 feet of water. At 145 years old, she is the oldest ship in the top 100 and probably the oldest ship I have ever dove. Despite the damage and thievery done by divers over the years, she is incredibly intact. The bowsprit and jib-boom were still in place as were all of her anchors and many deadeyes. She was like an archeological site. It was incredibly eerie to find the ships stove, with the remnants of a pot still on it and a pair of boots beside it. I soon realized that the boots were planted by a diver since the leather would have long rotted away and there was a second pair by the windlass. I later realized that the stove was probably planted too since it was not shown on the diagrams from the original survey of the wreck.

Our other two dives were done on the Cedarville, a 588 foot steel freighter, that sank after a collision in 100 feet of water. The Cedarville is by far the largest wreck I have ever dove. She is so huge that she is frightening. Our first dive was down a mooring that led us amidships where she had been cracked in two by the collision. We guessed which way was the stern, were wrong, ran low and air, and had to go back to the surface. What we did see was part of a crane boom and the huge open cargo hatches. The ship is lying on her side and these hatches open at you like the gapping maw of some behemoth trying to swallow you into its pitch black interior. They have, in fact, swallowed several divers who became disorientated by the sheer size of the holds, and never swam back out. That knowledge makes you take diving this wreck very seriously.

We returned the next day to dive the bow. We picked the correct mooring and arrived at the bow as planned. Then we had a fifty-fifty chance again. One direction lead to the bottom of the ship and nothing interesting and the other to the top of the ship and the cabins. Not knowing which was which, we chose wrong. Just as we realized our mistake, my dry suit sprang a leak. No problem, it was fairly slow and I could deal with being a little cold, wet, and uncomfortable. We headed up over the ship toward the deck when Joe lost buoyancy control and went shooting 35 feet up to the surface. As I awaited his return, my leak accelerated. When he got back, I signalled to abort the dive. He indicated to head to the mooring. Apparently, when I want to abort a dive, I swim like a torpedo. I soon came across a hull feature that even now, looking at the diagram of the wreck, I still cannot identify. I looked back to see that I had outrun Joe so badly that I couldn’t see him. I went back and found Joe. I was no longer certain of where I was on the wreck and my leak was getting dangerous. In a dry suit, most of your buoyancy comes from the air in the suit. If you lose too much of that air, the only way to the surface is to drop your weight belt and forget all chances of controlling your ascent. Being in only 35 feet of water it was easy to do a free ascent so I signalled for one and we got the heck out of there. I could have switched to my wetsuit and gone down with a new tank and continued on to dive the last wreck we had planned, but neither of us felt inclined to push our luck.

I dare say that the Straits of Mackinac has better diving than Tobermory. That is, better wrecks to dive. St. Ignace sure doesn’t have Tobermory’s numerous dive boats and three dive shops, two of them having airfill stations, and all of them open seven days a week. There was only one dive boat and one dive shop in St. Ignace and both only operate on weekends. Oh, and we were there mid week. To get air, we had to call the owner of the dive shop who lives in Warren, Michigan, and he gave us the number of a local guy who had a key to the shop and who, out of the goodness of his heart, came down to the dive shop every night after work to fill our tanks. You can bet we gave him a big tip.

The only other drawback was ferries. There are ferries running in every which direction to Mackinac Island. It seems that in order to get licenced to serve as a Mackinac Island Ferry you must first demonstrate that you can throw at least a six foot wake. I guess tourists going to Mackinac Island enjoy watching pleasure boaters being pitched overboard as their boats careen back and forth and smaller pleasure boats foundering in the wake of the ferries.

Joe and I returned to Alpena by way of Hammond Bay and Joe disembarked at Alpena. It was there that I began to curse Duncan Hind. The Wednesday before I left, Duncan told me that I should get a new autopilot as a backup because that old piece of s(excrement)t of mine isn’t going to last much longer. I told him that old piece of s(faecal matter)t had a brand new electronics package in it, and besides what could be more reliable than the autopilot that had served this vessel faithfully for 28 years!

On the way in to Alpena, I turned Winston’s control knob a little too hard and his feedback string snapped. Yes you read that correctly: string. Now I have jury rigged some great things with string in my time, including the cruise control of my last car, but this string was the original equipment. As might be implied by the word string, this is one part of Winston that has not been so faithful over the last 28 years. The bright side being, I was very familiar with this repair job. No problem maan, I fix it... manana.

Manana rolled around. I re-provisioned then sat down to fix Winston. I tied the string and re-ran it then plugged him into the 12-volt outlet at the table to test him out and... what this? He blew a fuse. No problem maan, got lots a dose! Replace the fuse, plug him in and... what this? He blew that one too. No problem maan, got lots a dose! I wonder if he has a short... what this? That one blew too. No pr.. ooh, getting a little short on fuses and he definitely has a short. Put in a big fuse so that the wires will get hot and maybe smoke to help me find the short. We’ve got heat smoke, and what’s this? He blew the fuse for the 12-volt outlet. Whew! I’ve got one of those.

The smoke was coming from the circuit board. I pulled it out and quickly found a broken circuit. Now I simply had to figure out how to solder the circuit without solder or a soldering gun. I discovered that a screwdriver heated over the stove would melt solder. With much reheating, I managed to transfer enough solder from a nearby connection to make the joint and presto! MacGyver eat your heart out! I plugged him and what the @&%^$#$^! He blew the fuse for the 12-volt circuit again. I found another that was bigger but would work and... he blew another fuse. With two fuses left, I gave Winston his last rights and sat down to contemplate how much it was going to suck, (Pardon me! I wouldn’t want my students reading that. I keep telling them that is physically impossible.) make that: blow from the other direction, to steer by hand while crossing the lake, and where to have Duncan Fed-Ex my new autopilot.

Then I had a brainwave. I installed my second last fuse and took him out to the cockpit and plugged him into the 12-volt outlet out there. He worked flawlessly. I checked it with my multi-metre and would seem that the moron who installed the outlets (me) wired one backwards. I have no clue which one is correct, but I now know that Winston is very polarity sensitive and is wired to work only with the outlet in the cockpit.

The next day life was great! Winston was back at the helm! I was one hour from Presque Isle when: snap. Winston broke his feedback string all by himself. Curses were uttered at Duncan, and that night Winston was disassembled, the string was tied, and life was good.

From there I headed to the Ducks. An isolated set of islands on the Canadian side of the lake, home to the tallest lighthouse in Georgian Bay, and two shipwrecks shallow enough to snorkel on. Halfway across the lake Winston began hanging a right. I kept resetting him and watching him carefully. The feedback string was slipping. Somehow I had gotten grease on the string. (Not difficult considering half of the parts inside are covered in grease.) Curses were uttered at Duncan and I helmed the boat for the next two hours, steering by compass half of the time. Steering by compass is argued by many to be the least fun you can possibly have on a sailboat.

At the ducks I visited the lighthouse. The only buildings remaining at the light station are the light tower and one of the houses. The other buildings have been reduced to foundations but there are still enough vital clues to tell you what each building was. The 2km trail was pretty interesting in itself, with several amusing things like stop signs and placards for ‘The Enchanted Forest’. I wondered if those were put there by the light keeper’s children. I also wondered how they moved supplies 2km from the harbour to the lighthouse. The light having been built in 1918, I presumed they used a surplus WWI jeep. Wrong! On my way back to the harbour I went down a side trail on a lark and found the dump. Any archeologist will tell you that the dump, is were you will learn the most about any ancient town site. This may only have been abandoned for 25 years but the principle still applies. I discovered that they used a car and two pickup trucks to travel from the light station to the harbour. I later found a second car in the harbour. The greatest find in the dump was a child’s tricycle. I can just imagine some little tot pedalling it along the light stations concrete walkways. The walkways are so perfectly sized for that tricycle that the child must have imagined that they were highways built just for him and his trike.

I spent a second day at the Ducks snorkelling the wrecks of the Chattanooga and the Bielman. Both were old wooden vessels scuttled there in a futile attempt to create a break wall to improve the harbour. Bielman had a special significance to me. On her way to the Ducks, she was being towed up the St. Clair River by the tug Monarch. As she was about to pass under the Bluewater bridge, a gust caught the Beilman swinging her into the Monarch, swamping the Monarch. Today, the Monarch is by far the nicest wreck in the St. Clair River and one of my favourite dives.

After snorkelling, I got down to the serious business of cruising: fixing your boat in new and exotic places. I cleaned everything including the bottom of the boat and fixed Winston for the third time being extremely careful not to get the freshly cleaned feedback string greasy.

Today Winston worked marvellously, as I followed my 30 year old cruising guide to the ghost town of Tolsmaville, and the not very picturesque Tolsmaville Harbour. I was extremely amused to find not only a pretty little bay, but a cute little cottage town with a population of about 100 people. I guess the only ghost was my 30 year old cruising guide! There was still some great ghost town feel to the place. Most of the cottages are restored or not-so-restored frontier houses from the original town, and I did find two abandoned buildings. I also found the car lot. By the harbour there is a field full of cars. It seems that you drive your car to the harbour and leave it there when you get on your boat to leave your cottage for the mainland. That way it is waiting to drive you back to your cottage on your return. No licence plates. No problem! And if you still can’t get it to start by the time you are ready to go back to the mainland, just leave it there and bring a newer one with you on your next trip!

Tomorrow I am off to the ghost town of Moiles Harbour. I wonder what its population will be?

Friday, August 17, 2001

I found my first digital signal tonight, but it is too weak and inconsistent to make a call. If all goes well, tomorrow I will be in Owen Sound where I should have a good strong digital signal and I will finally be able to send and receive e-mail.

Tonight I am in Regatta Bay near Parry Sound, where I spent the day weathered in by 25 knot winds and six foot waves both of which would have been on the nose if I had attempted to cross Georgian Bay to Owen Sound as planned.

It has been a long road getting here. Surprisingly enough, Moiles Harbour was no longer a ghost town either. It is now a YMCA camp. I did find the ruins of the old piers and the ruins of the saw mill. By the size of the stone foundations, it must have been enormous. It is amazing how nature has completely consumed it.

From Moiles I headed to Shoepack Bay in search of an anchor lost last year by South Porter Paul Major. Paul had marked the spot on my chart for me and I was really hoping to find it for him to thank him for the dinner he served me in Bad River last year. In two hours of snorkelling in the area Paul marked, I found a chunk of a big old shipwreck and an old 25 foot wooden powerboat, but no anchor. I also found a big submerged deadhead (a log with one end stuck in the bottom and the other pointing up, perfect for putting a hole in a boat’s hull) that Windsong would likely swing into if I stayed the night. I moved to a more sheltered and deadhead free anchorage about 45 minutes away. That night while eating dinner out in the cockpit I heard a rustling in the bushes on shore. I looked up to see a sow bear and her cub coming down to the water for a drink. She took one look at me a decided to go elsewhere for her drink.

The next day I sailed to Blind River to pick up my parents for their whirlwind tour of the North Channel. It was a tour of some of our favourite highlights. The first stop was Taschereau Bay. With the low water we were just able to sneak in with Windsong’s shallow 4'3" draft. In fact, when we tried to tie to shore we found ourselves stuck in the mud and had to pull ten feet back just to get six inches of water under the keel.

Stop two was the Benjamin Islands and a bay we have named McCurdy’s Cove in honour of Mr McCurdy who was so certain that he owned it that he ran a rope across the entrance to prevent anyone else from getting in. Our stay in McCurdy’s was not a good one. Once again we had tied to the shore. At about midnight there was a loud ping followed by a thunk. All hands ran out on deck to discover that the anchor had let go and we were lying broadside to the rocks. Let me assure you, anchor drills are a lot less fun when the rocks are inches away and it is your boat! Mr. McCurdy’s ghost wasn’t done with us yet. When we tried to pull out in the morning, the anchors (we added a second during the midnight anchor drill) were set on the wrong angle to pull us away from the rocks with the current wind direction. We ended up with Windsong with her other broadside to the rocks, me in the water untangling an anchor line from the prop, and a neighbouring power boater pulling us off the rocks with his dingy. It was utterly humiliating, not to mention the wear on the boat. I’ll definitely think twice before I tie to the rocks again.

Our last stop was Snug Harbour (The world’s most popular name for an anchorage. There are at least three on Lake Huron alone) before crossing Georgian Bay to Tobermory where I traded Mom and Dad in for Joe.

Joe and I did four dives in the Tobermory area before returning to the North Channel. Our first dive was the legendary Arabia, a 130 foot barque that foundered in 120 feet of water. She is beautifully intact with her majestic bows soaring above the lake bottom, still holding her two anchors and bowsprit in place. Thanks to my nice warm dry suit, this was the first time I was able to enjoy diving this wreck and really look around. Dive two was the Philo Scoville, a 140 foot schooner wrecked in about 95 feet of water. We had dove the Scoville many times and were in search of her anchors which reportedly lie 100 feet east of the wreck. I swear there are no anchors down there! Dive three was the San Jacinto, a schooner that foundered in 80 feet of water. And dive four was the City of Cleveland, a 255 foot wooden steamer that stranded on the rocks in 30 feet of water. It was a beautiful day for diving the City of Cleveland. It was bright and sunny and the visibility was incredible. From the higher parts of the wreck you could look out over almost the entire wreck site sprawled over a moonscape of limestone rocks. It made you feel as though you had come home to the planet ocean.

After our second and final day of diving in the Tobermory area we spent the night in Rattlesnake Harbour on Fitzwilliam island before crossing Georgian Bay to one of my favourite spots, Thomas Bay. Thomas is a beautiful secluded bay surrounded by pink Killarney granite and windswept pines straight out of a Group of Seven painting.

The next stop was Covered Portage. Covered Portage is undoubted the one of the most beautiful anchorages on earth. It is rimmed on all sides by towering quartzite cliffs, gleaming white and sparkling in the sunlight. There is a trail that leads you 200 feet up to the top of the highest cliff where you can look down on the anchored boats which look like dinky toys floating in an azure blue bath tub.

In Covered Portage we had one of our crazier adventures. Joe was dying for fish and chips so we took the dingy into Killarney. We missed the fish a chip wagon by fifteen minutes so we were forced to enjoy a gourmet meal at the Sportmen’s Inn complete with live piano music. Then the adventure began. I had to navigate the dingy back to Covered Portage under only starlight without a GPS. I was most proud of myself for accomplishing the task flawlessly without ever having to slow from top speed.

Next stop was the wreck of the India, a 215 foot wooden steamer that mysteriously caught fire at anchor. The fire was bafflingly difficult to control but all hands easily escaped injury. She was kind of old and was starting to leak and conveniently; the insurance was payed up. Coincidence?

She is very intact for having burned and the visibility, while not like Tobermory, was the clearest I’ve ever seen it on that wreck.

We filled our tanks in Little Current, spent the night in Sturgeon Cove, then headed for the Benjamins. Our anchor hit the bottom just in time to hold us through the 35 knot gusts of a thunderstorm that pulled one boat in the harbour off of her anchor. We had a nice stay in the Benjamins that included a dingy tour of the islands so that I could show Joe all of our favourite spots. The plan was to dive two more wrecks the next day but the wind howled all day forcing us to remain in anchorage, relax and do some reading.

I dropped Joe off in Blind River then headed to Clapperton Harbour where I finally found my ghost town. There is an old abandoned resort on Harbour Island. Some buildings were truly decrepit but most were safe to enter, including a cellar that looked like a Hobbit hole, many beautiful old cabins, and the main building of the resort. The bar still had all of its tables and chairs and many empty liquor bottles. There was even an old piano though the keys had seized. The scene would have been absolutely perfect if only the piano had started playing by itself!

The same day, I found my second ghost town. I went to the abandoned and long ago demolished Clapperton light station. All that was left was an old shed, the new steel tower, and very few foundations. I searched around for two hours and at long last found the road to the Baker’s farm. The Bakers were the light keepers on Clapperton for three generations and maintained a farmstead and winter home in the interior of the island.

No one had been down the Baker’s road in a long time. The were so many blow downs across the road and so much overgrowth that, at times, I thought I was kidding myself that I was still on the road. When I reached the farm I discovered that I was four days too late. Three days previous while Joe and I were weathering the thunderstorm in the Benjamins, a lightning strike and fire were reported on Clapperton. The lightning had struck two of the four buildings of the farmstead and burned them to the ground. The place still wreaked of smoke and there were footprints and signs of water flow. Evidently, a fire crew had been flown in to prevent the fire from spreading to the other buildings and surrounding forest. There was probably nothing that could have been done to save the burning buildings. I could identify one as the barn because of the pile of burnt hay the centre, the other left no clues. What was left behind was a work shed, complete with many tools and a huge saw blade, a log farmhouse, some small sheds and the outhouse. The farmhouse took serious courage to enter since it had a cellar below the rickety first floor for me to fall into. I felt somewhat safe making sure there were floor joists under my feet at all times. The Bakers sure were hardy people. There were three tiny bedrooms upstairs, a tiny master bedroom downstairs, a large common room that served as kitchen, dining room, and living room, one wood burning stove, and no running water. Going to the bathroom in the winter would have involved walking 200 feet through 3 feet of snow! By the number of implements left behind, I was certain that the Bakers had intended to come back.

The other interested element of the farmstead was that someone had meticulously disassembled the dwelling from the light station and neatly piled it next to the mystery building that had just burned. A stairway and one doorframe was still intact. The remaining doors were leaned against the work shed and the rest looked like a display of flooring and wooden siding at Home Depot!

As usual, my adventure wasn’t over yet. When I returned to my dingy that I had pulled up on a rock at the base of the cliffs near at the light station, I discovered that the wind I had been hearing through the trees was not a figment of my imagination. The dingy had been washed halfway off of the rock and was swamped. Fearing the rocks had torn the bottom out of the dingy, I made no attempt to find the easy way down and simply scaled straight down the cliff to the dingy. All I could go was push it off of the rocks, hope the engine would start, and hope it still had a bottom under the floorboards. Fortunately, both of the above came true, but now I had a different problem. I had six inches of water in the dingy and a four foot sea rolling from the direction I wanted to go. From my vantage point in my water logged dingy, I had to look up to see the crests of the waves. I felt like a Vendée Globe racer in a Southern Ocean storm. I did exactly what they do: I turned around and ran with it. This enabled my to open the drain plug and empty the water from the dingy while having a fairly smooth ride. But it also forced me to go the long way around the island and I really didn’t have that much gas. The ride didn’t stay all that smooth. I never encountered four foot waves on that side of the island but I had a few legs where I was forced to pound into smaller waves. There was no way to keep the dingy planing to conserve fuel, and there was no way to stay dry. I arrived at Windsong, soaked, shivering, and thanking heaven for the half inch of gas still left the dingy’s gas tank.

From there I headed to Bad River by way of Snug Harbour. I had a rip roaring sail to Bad River with sustained speeds of close to seven knots in 25 knot winds and six foot seas. It certainly got my heart pumping when I had to start the engine, drop the sails and motor straight down the waves into Bad River. At one point, as I crossed a section of water 23 feet deep my depth sounded read 27 feet on the crests of the waves and 20 feet in the troughs.

The Bad is famous for its rapids. I took my usual dingy tour through the infamous Devil’s Door Rapids into the river itself. The rapids were very rapid this year despite the low water but most were too shallow to get the dingy through. I was equally amused and appalled by this year’s new addition. Years ago, I suppose when the area became a park, a discreet Ontario Parks no swimming sign was placed by the rapids we used to float through with our life jackets on in high water years. Last year, there was an obnoxious old man and his grand children camped next to those rapids. He felt that the river was for fishermen only, and that us cruisers in our dinghies should just bugger off. He also felt that taking a dingy through the rapids was like jumping off a cliff. Whenever he saw a dingy approach, he sent his grandchildren to climb up on the rocks and scream, "Don’t chute the rapids! It’s too dangerous!"

Last year the anchorage had so many boats in it that it looked like a scene from the Bahamas and the river had so many fishing boats it was like a highway. I guess I was much later in the season this year because there was only one other boat in the harbour and I saw one fisherman. There was however the new addition. The obnoxious old man had been replaced by a series of huge white signs all having the word danger in huge red print followed by useful tidbits like; "No Swimming" or traffic instructions telling you which rapids boats were allowed to go up or go down. It could only been made more absurd if this beautiful wilderness river had been fitted with a ridiculous robot continually uttering, "Danger Will Robinson. Danger!" You know paradise has been lost when it has become so crowded that this sort of crowd control measure becomes necessary.

I now had to get myself south to the Parry Sound area so that I could cross to Owen Sound for the Summerfolk folk music festival. The forecast was for 30 knot winds and nine foot waves on the nose so I elected for the small craft route sheltered behind a series of islands and shoals. The catch was that it had a limiting depth of six feet. Luck would have it that one of the six foot sections would be in an exposed area with enough wave action the I was going to need all of that six feet of water and more or a horseshoe up my derriere to get through with out touching. I went dead slow but tapped a rock anyway. At least it was a gentle tap.

At that took me here to Regatta Bay where I have spent the day weathered in, reading and writing profusely.