8/17/11 -  8/20/11  A nice little town called Little Current separates Georgian Bay from the North Channel.  We stopped for provisions, anchored out and then came back in the morning to attend a radio show for cruisers.  We spent the next several days cruising the channel.  It is similar to Georgian Bay but easier to anchor and I enjoyed it more.  It was late in the afternoon when we came across the U.S. border.  We weren't up to continuing on for another hour to make it to Drummond Island, which is the customs port, so we put up our yellow quarantine flag (indicating that we had not cleared customs) and anchored for the night.  I forgot to put on the anchor light which may have had something to do with the visit we got from U.S. Customs / Border Protection.  They woke us up at 10pm and after waiting for us to get dressed put two officers aboard to check our documents and a brief search of the boat.  We know the drill since we have been boarded twice before but not in the night.  They were very pleasant but cautioned us about not showing a light.   The next day we went into Drummond and cleared customs without incident.   It felt good to be back in our home country and we went to DeTour Marina, Michigan.  DeTour is the crossroads between Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Lake Superior and quite a few freighters passed by us carrying corn, wheat, gravel, rock salt and taconite (processed iron ore).   These freighters are up to 1000 feet long and work until the lakes freeze over.  We took caution cruising these waters remembering the Edmund Fitzgerald, a 700 foot freighter that went down with all hands in November, 1975 after encountering 35 foot waves on Lake Superior.   We attended church Sunday morning at Union Presbyterian in DeTour and departed to an anchorage near Government Island.

8/9/11 -  8/16/11   Georgian Bay is called the land of 30.000 islands.  Some of them are only a few square feet but they must be navigated around just the same.  We like to anchor out most of the time rather than go to marinas not only because of the obvious savings but also the quiet and privacy.   Anchorages were sometimes hard to find though because the banks were so steep that when there was a protected area large enough for the boat, the water was too deep to get an anchor down to the bottom.   Also many of the islands are inhabited and they get electricity by way of underwater cables that are marked on the charts so that you can avoid anchoring there.   The water is so clean and clear in the Great Lakes that as soon as we entered Lake Ontario Lace began doing a little laundry every day in a bucket.   It only took a few minutes and kept us from spending time in a laundromat when we did get to a marina.  We spent the next 8 days wandering about, only making about 20 miles a day.  Probably the highlight of Georgian Bay was a fjord like bay called Baie Fine.   It is long and narrow with vertical sides rising 200 feet in some places.   We anchored for the evening and rowed the dinghy to explore the rocky shoreline.

8/4/11 -  8/8/11  After raising us over 800 feet above the level of Lake Ontario the locks of the Trent-Severn were now lowering us back down to the level of Lake Huron.  Lock 43 took us down 47 feet and we spent the night on the lower side.   One of the final locks is called the Big Chute and is not a lock at all.   It is actually a marine railway and lifts boats out of the water on slings and transports them over land down to the next level.   If there was a primary goal on this entire trip it was to enter the Georgian Bay and North Channel on the north side of Lake Huron.   This area has been described as the best cruising in the entire world by veterans.   The area is part of the Canadian Shield which is characterized by granite with a thin layer of soil or gravel with coniferous trees growing out of the cracks.   Some of these rocks date to the origin of this planet, some 4.5 billion years.   The scenery is spectacular but we actually found Georgian Bay to be somewhat uncomfortable because the channels through the rocks are often narrow and the penalty for inattention to navigation could be a bent prop or worse.   We actually did bump the bottom once but came away with no damage.   When we were in Elizabeth City, NC we met a fellow on his boat that lives here and he invited us to call him when we were in this area.   We anchored at Beckwith Island and he and his wife, who is a native Ojibwa Indian, came out to pick us up in one of his boats.  They took us to shore and then drove us to a restaurant for lunch and then the grocery store.   The Ojibwas experienced somewhat the same treatment from the government that American Indians did.   They were shuffled onto three remote island reservations as refuse and expected to expire.   As it turned out they survived and now struggle to hold on to their heritage as young members of the tribe move away the the native language becomes obscure.  

 7/30/11 -  8/3/11   The locks along the Trent-Severn Canal are often remote.   Several that we went through have no roads leading to them and are only accessible by water for the operators.   As we are nearing Lake Huron we seem to be seeing more cottages along the shore some modest and others large and ornate but always with a dock and boat(s).  Our luck didn't hold very long.   The three month old pump that transferred fresh water to the faucets quit and we were forced to go a little out of our way to Barrie, ON to get a new one.  The Confetti holds 250 gallons of water but it is inaccessible without the pump.   On the way to Barrie we passed quite an impressive home with it's own helicopter and we were later told that it belongs to the Swanson family (of Swanson dinner fame).   Barrie has both bus and rail service to Toronto so after installing a new pump we took the bus in.   Toronto is an impressive town.   It reminded us of New York city in a lot of ways.  We saw new and impressive architecture growing out of very old surroundings.  It has the Ice Hockey Hall of Fame which we didn't go into because we don't know the second thing about hockey (everyone knows the first thing: missing teeth).   It obviously has a vibrant business community,  the Toronto Stock Exchange is there, and even a smaller version of Times Square with ten story television screens.   We walked until we couldn't walk any more on pink granite sidewalks and then went to the train station and did a crossword puzzle until the "GO" (Government of Ontario) train came to take us back to Barrie.   The next day we were off again with still more locks to pass through before we reached Georgian Bay in northern Lake Huron.

7/16/11 -  7/29/11  We were continuing down the Trent-Severn Canal and I began to have trouble shifting one of the transmissions.  It eventually locked up and we limped into Buckhorn, Ontario on one engine.   After I did a brief investigation and talked to a transmission shop on the phone, it became apparent that the transmission had to be removed and sent in for overhaul.   This is no small project in that the engine has to be moved before the 150 pound transmission can be disconnected and lifted up through the floor of the cabin.   Luckily the marina where we landed had the equipment to do the job.   By the time we shipped it to Wheatley, Ontario, some 300 miles away, had it overhauled, had it shipped back and then installed it, we were laid up for 12 days.   We took the opportunity to get some overdue things done on the boat and to catch up on paperwork.   We found Canadians to be very pleasant, low key folks who revel in their brief summertime.  One shock was when I walked into the state run liquor store (there are no private liquor stores in Canada) and saw the prices.   I refused to pay what they were asking for a bottle of scotch and settled for the cheapest booze in the store which was a 1.75 liter bottle of vodka for $52.00 !!!!   How I longed for Texas free enterprise.