August 2
St. Ignace is nice town. We spent a couple of nights in the marina. Most everything is an easy walk away.
It even has two hardware stores so I had to stop in there, although I didn’t really need anything except a small amount of epoxy. The galley sink has a pull-out faucet and I found a crack at the end of the threads that attaches to the hose. I sealed it up with epoxy and wound some sewing thread around it to provide some reinforcement. It just has to last through the season. It’s the kind that looks like chrome plated metal, but it’s mostly plastic. There are better ones that are made from metal and it’s such a pain to replace faucets, I want this next one to outlast me.
We walked a mile to the grocery stores for provisions, and the next day had a visit from some church friends who happened to be camping at the Straits. Ken Dunn was in a third-grade Sunday school class that I co-led a rather long time ago. We had a lovely visit with 3/4 of his family. I contacted them a short while after they left because we wanted to refill our propane tank. The boat has a small 10 pound tank that hold ten pounds of propane. While we have a pressure gauge on the tank, the measurement actually is responsive to temperature your than consumption. How much is left? You need a scale. So the whole Dunn family drove me to two different places to get the tank refilled. We put in 1.4 gallons. Yes, dear reader, the tank capacity is measured in pounds, and they sell it by the gallon. Turns out that is about 6 pounds, so it was time to get a fill.
We left St. Ignace on the 28th of July bound for DeTour Village Marina, where we were meeting Mary for an overnight. It was probably the best sail of our adventure. We sailed nearly forty miles of the 43 mile journey.
As we approached DeTour we heard a distress call from a boat that we met on Beaver Island. They had hit rocks and damaged their rudder. They could only motor in circles while being in water too deep to anchor and being slowly swept into Lake Huron. We aren’t equipped to tow, so we hailed them to let them know that we were going to leave them to starboard as we went to the marina.
The next morning we filled our diesel tank and had the holding tank pumped out. And we were off to Canada. Clearing customs was an easy process with our NEXUS passes. I merely gave our boat name, our names, answered three or four questions and told them where and when we would arrive in Thessalon, Ontario.
We had a nice walk around town in the evening. The next day we set off to anchor in Tolsmaville, which is a small town that we walked around most of it after going ashore at the beach. We might have walked a mile.
From there, we went to the bigger village of Meldrum Bay. Anchored south of the marina, and went ashore. Chatted with the harbour master and went to the general store for sunglasses, beer and ice cream bars.
And yesterday, Saturday, we mostly motored to our first anchorage in the North Channel, Turnbull Island.
Entering the anchorage, we hit our first rock. We weren’t going fast, so it was a sudden stop, then full reverse and some cursing at the Navionics charting app that stopped updating our position a few seconds before we hit.
Sunday has been a lazy day. Coffee – followed by eggs, feta, onion, spinach hash – and of course, bacon!
As it was cool, we spent time with our books. A fellow cruiser dinghied by, and we apologized for our current government relations. After lunch, we had a Sunday afternoon dinghy ride around the inner island and went out to the rock that I hit. Rookie mistake – if it’s brown, go around – is the new mantra. I have memorized the rock free course out from the anchorage to go to anchor tomorrow elsewhere. The repair of the faucet did not survive so it’s a little squirty hose now.
Tuesday the 4th we go to a marina – we need to fill our tanks with water, and empty the holding tank.