The trip from The Bustards was beautiful, there was one area as we entered Collins Inlet channel that was quite tight and low on water but no “Bumps”. The town of Killarny marks the end of Georgian Bay and the begging of the North Channel on our cruise. It is quite an interesting villages with a boat in Liquor store. First time we have seen a Boat-In movie theater. We just passed through for now and made plans to return to The Red Bus for dinner.
Covered Portage Cove is one of the most beautiful anchorages we have seen so far on the loop, if not the most beautiful. When we got to Covered Portage Cove it was already pretty crowded, about 30 boats, there was a Lopper there’ “Wild Goose”, they told us that there was room behind a group of express cruisers tied together. The chart showed about 2 feet of water but “Wild Goose” said a large trawler had been there the day before. We slowly checked it out, the group on the express cruisers said they were leaving so we set the hook without worry of swinging into them if the wind changed.
It was a Hot day and we enjoyed getting into the water. I swam over to the group of cruiser that were from the Detroit area and asked were the best place in Northern Michigan to store the boat for a trip home in a few weeks. They suggest Traverse City.
Just as the group of cruisers started to leave the wind shifted and the stern of our boat was only about 25 feet off the group. They did not swing because they had anchors out in back and in front of their boats. “Wild Goose” and “Time and Tide” came by and asked us over for drinks, we said we had plans to go into Little Current by dinghy to the Red Bus. They said to see if they were still on Wild Goose when we got back from “punching our ticket”. I took that to mean that the “Red Bus” is one of these thing everyone does. Turned out “the Red Bus” was pretty interesting but the food was poor. Dry fish and soggy fries. We got some supplies and went to “The Sportsman” for a drink and Internet. We sent out some text messages that we were online in hopes of skping with Knox on his birthday, we got to se him in his new truck riding around in our back yard. We are looking forward to seeing him in a few weeks, he is changing and growing up so fast.
When we got back we went over to “Wild Goose” and enjoyed a few drinks with Jim and Ann. They were headed to “the Pool” in the morning, maybe we would see them there. I got a great shot of Jackets from their sundeck as the sunset.
The next day we hiked up the granite to the top of the ridge above the cove. It was a semi marked trail and we were both sweating. It felt good to get some excersize. We could hear thunder so we made our way back to the boat. Tha afternoon we tried to make it to the ridge on the opposite side of the cove but ran into private property. It was still a nice hike. The wind picked up and the boat drug the anchor a little, I adjusted the scope and the radius of the alarm. According to the forecast we should not be getting a lot of wind tonight. It is never a restful night when your anchor has drugged and your close to other boats or the rocks.
We both checked it several times and we were fine but we did not sleep well.
