Wiarton

I arrived Friday night after a relaxed cruise down from Tobermory.  Destination achieved.  About 600 miles in six days.  I wasn’t trying to make a fast trip, but with unsettled weather the timing allowed a reasonably smooth trip.  I also travel faster in waves for comfort.  Nine knots is much more comfortable than seven, and I adjust speed according to condition. 

Friend Leo who has a boat at the marina was able to give me a lift home to Guelph, about 200 km away, and I’m now back with my car.  Escapade is at anchor.

This is my favourite spot for the boat while I come and go ashore.  Tomorrow I’ll go dinghy racing in Guelph.  It’s a nice drive through the countryside in my car or on the motorcycle.

I love roaming around local marinas. There’s always something to catch the eye.  This is a Paceship Northwind 29 built in Mahone Bay to a C&C design. Clearly well kept.  The early C&C designs still look really sweet to me, unlike some of their IOR inspired stuff from ten years later.  This boat was introduced in 1969. 

Leo has a Corvette 31 that was one of the early boats that C&C made as a builder around the same time.  They’re both shoal draft keel/CB boats. I’ll have to have a closer look at both. 

No sign of Saugeen Queen. Maybe they were visiting last fall.

I keep thinking that this would be the ideal place to have a mooring field, or at least one for me.  The bay is exposed to the east but otherwise well sheltered.

I’m trying to get the inside clean and presentable for guests, so I’ve got time to tell stories.

I was reminded a few times coming up the Michigan shore of my inaugural voyage on Mazurka almost exactly 9 years earlier.  Pre-blog.  I had bought the boat ashore in St Joseph MI a few months before. 

That was an epic trip.  I took two weeks off work with the sole goal of getting the boat back to Canada, launched the boat and headed out.

I made it to Tobermory, but ended taking the long way.  A giant high pressure set in just as I was leaving, and I had two weeks of relentlessly warm, calm and sunny weather.  I cleared into Canada in Little Current five days out of St Joe then kept going to Killarney and did a clockwise loop of Georgian Bay. 

I was hooked, both on trawlering and on this area.  It really is a beautiful spot.  I have pictures that I should dig out and put here.

To complete my travels that summer I headed down the Trent-Severn, through the Thousand Islands, and across the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and stored the boat ashore on the north shore of Lake Erie.  I know I don’t take many pics these days, but it’s sometimes because I’ve got my hands full, but more often that I’m traveling familiar territory and an album full of pictures.