Well Georgian Bay and the North Channel our beautiful. However if you go into shallow water you WILL damage your boat. While we were in Midland were heard about three other loopers that had their boats on “The Hard”. “The Hard” is when your boat is on dry land, which means you are getting repairs. All the boats had made a mistake and gotten out the channel and hit rock. The worst one had bent both props, one shaft, and one strut. It is easy to make the mistake. The channel is maker with red and green buoys. The rule in the St. Johns river at home is “Red Right Return”, keep the Red Buoy on the right side of the boat when traveling from the ocean into port. Along “the Loop” home changes in every waterway or cut so you have to determine which side to be on several times a day. Sometimes we get confused and just stop the boat till we figure it out. We miss traveling with another Looper as we watched each other’s backs.
The “Small Craft Route” will take us though the Georgian Bay from Port Severn to Killarny. It has tight areas and 90 degree turns, both of which can be difficult in wind conditions. Many loopers have opted not to go through the “Small Craft Route” if their boat is over 40 feet, we are 52 and have decided to go for it. Avoiding a few tight spots like “the canoe cannel”. We made this decision after taking to locals where we heard the same thing we had heard for several years. Study the charts and stay in the channel.
We had avoid at least one tight area by going to Midland and rejoined the Small Craft channel at its next intersection with the “Shipping Channel”.
I tried to take pictures to show how beautiful it is and how tight the navigation are, but they don’t do it justice. It is truly an amazing area. When we got to Echo Bay we were please to see 20Buck$. This was there stop as well. We anchored the boat and tied off the stern to rocks. This is a park area and there are pins placed along the shore to tie off our boat. This increase the number of boats that can use the anchorage since th boats don’t swing in the wind. This was the first time for us and Ken gave me hand.
We went with Pat and Ken to Henry’s. A Restaurant that can only be reached by boat or float plane. The fried Pickerel (Walleye) was terrific. It was severed family style with enough french fries for a group of 12. We had left over fries but no left over fish. We said goodbye to Pat and Ken, they were going 60 miles the next day, we planned on about 20. I don’t think we will see them again along their loop
