Craunological II -- Great Lakes Cruise 2023

Sunday, June 25 to Wednesday, June 28 -- Working in Naples   While Craunological II just sat at her dock in Owen Sound during this period, we were busy traveling down to Naples and moving our stuff out of what used to be our condo (and is owned by someone else as of June 20th). This brief summary is just for the record.  We got up early on Sunday to catch a nonstop flight to RSW, took a cab to the condo, got our car, went for a quick lunch at Pincher's, then spent the afternoon packing up things and schlepping stuff either to our rental storage unit or to a condo down the hall  which friends were gracious enough to let us use as an interim storage depot as well as a place to stay while we were in town. The mover showed up on  Monday to pack and on Tuesday to load their truck and take our stuff to their storage facility. We were busy both days packing and schlepping and cleaning. Wednesday was a travel day, with a cab picking us up at 6:20 and our finding a dinner spo...

Thursday, June 29 -- Owen Sound to Tobermory (72 miles) Good to be back on the water again -- and a good day for it. Sunny with high clouds, mid-70s, with modest wind and waves coming from behind us. Our destination today was Tobermory, a village at the far north end of the Bruce Peninsula. This is a logical stop for boaters going to or from Georgian Bay or the North Channel, and John always stayed here on family trips back in the 1960s and again in 1993 and 2006 on trips with his dad. The harbor and surroundings are still lovely, but the village is much more touristy than he remembers, and this was confirmed talking to some Boomer natives in one of the shops.    We got up early to turn in our rental car when they opened at 8:30, then called into a 9am Zoom meeting of the Wiggins Bay Dock Owners Association to get the latest on rebuilding our docks in Naples. (The good news is that things are on schedule for the docks to be finished some time next summer and it will cost a bit...

Saturday, June 24 -- Hopewell Bay anchorage to Owen Sound (70 miles) This was a big day. It made our heads spin. We ran Craunological II south across the open waters of Georgian Bay (which was blessedly calm) to a nice marina in Owen Sound, which is a big metropolis compared to where we've been the last few days. Then we got a rental car and drove to a hotel near the Toronto International Airport (Janet at the wheel, John navigating, looking out the window, or working on a crossword puzzle). So we went from a secluded anchorage to a concrete transportation jungle all in one day. We're very glad that everything came together for this plan to work, but it was a bit dizzying and definitely tiring.  Here is the approach to the town of Owen Sound, which is an old grain port. Note the green range lights between the two grain elevators. To begin this crazy day we got up early and weighed anchor a bit after nine. We were out of sight of land for about an hour crossing Georgian Bay, wit...

  Friday, June 23 -- Killarney to anchorage in Hopewell Bay (79 miles) Another great day on the water. We had favorable weather for a 5-hour run to a beautiful, secluded anchorage in the archipelago of islands SW of Pointe au Baril, Ontario. This will give us a good jumping off point for our run across Georgian Bay to Owen Sound on Saturday. We had a lazy morning at the Killarney Mountain Lodge. We did a load of laundry, updated the blog, and finally got underway at noon. In short order we entered Collins Inlet, which is a narrow channel carved by glaciers through red and pink granite. The channel runs about 12 miles almost due east-west with a small lake near the east end. Look it up on a map. It is hard to fathom the forces that created this. We saw one fellow cruiser the entire ride and a few local boats. Otherwise just rocks and trees and water. Absolutely stunning.  John ran through Collins Inlet at least once back in the 60s with his family and then again in 1993 while c...

Thursday, June 22 -- John Harbor to Killarney (76 miles) Another glorious day on the water. Sunny but hazy with a light breeze out of the SW all morning, which shifted to the SE and strengthened a bit after we passed Little Current. We covered a lot of famous cruising ground today -- the Whalesback and McBean Channels, Little Current, Baie Fine and Killarney itself.  These are all waters that John boated on back in the 1960s during two or three-week family vacations on his dad's cabin cruisers -- probably at least half a dozen trips, usually with other boats that also had kids. These were absolutely awesome vacations for a kid. After a long break John returned again in 1993 with his dad, son and son's friend (the boys were twelve at the time and reveled in the freedom of running in the dinghy on their own), again in the early oughts with Janet and his mom and dad, and finally in 2006 with his dad, son and son-in-law. All of these trips were in his dad's old 32' Pacemake...

Wednesday, June 21 -- Soo, Ontario to anchorage in John Harbor (93 miles) We got up at a decent hour to do phone and email chores and a grocery run (which took cab rides to and from), but it was still almost 12:30 before we got underway. The wind and weather were very favorable -- and we had lots of daylight to work with being the summer solstice -- so we decided to make a long run and head for John Harbor. This is a recommended anchoring spot that turned out to be absolutely empty when we dropped anchor at 6:30, which was nice.  We had a pair of loons swim by as the sun was setting. We also saw an eagle earlier.   It was great to be on the boat again and cruising in the North Channel, which is widely viewed as some of the finest cruising waters in the Great Lakes. It is like cruising the coast of Maine but without the tides, lobster pots or cottages. The islands and shorelines are all glacially carved granite covered with birch and pine, as in Maine, but unlike Maine the...