Back into Canada!

After a week of preparation, Selkie was ready to restart our journey.

We left Mackinaw August 2 to head over to the Mackinac Island.

We carried a crew of several as we invited some friends and family to come along with us to the island.

It’s always fun to have guests on Selkie, and in particular children. The kids’ excitement in being on a boat and seeing how it operates and steering the boat (even when it’s on auto pilot) is always fun.

We arrived at the Island and docked at the harbor, checked in, and then put Selkie away from her cruise. Our guests disembarked and left to have fun. We had lunch with friends (who generously picked up the tab, thank you!) and then said good bye.

In the afternoon we noticed some dark clouds in the distance over the bluff of the harbor. A quick radar check showed that a small but significant thunderstorm was headed our way.

We battened down the hatches on Selkie and played cards. I won, which is a rare occurrence on Selkie.

The storm drove a lot of tourists off the islands. By the time the storm was over it was pretty quiet with not a lot of traffic.

Some of you will remember that traffic on Mackinaw Island consists of bicycles and horses as there’s no cars allowed on the island. You can hear the horses coming, but not the bicyclists unless they are ringing their bells.

Pedestrians do not have right of way on the island. Libbie almost got run down by an irritated local.

We had a great dinner at the Yankee Rebel Tavern for dinner, the same restaurant we celebrated our anniversary last year when we’re on the island. I highly recommend it for a good, reasonably priced meal on the Island.

The run to Mackinac Island was a proving day to make sure all Selkie’s engine and stabilizer systems worked. They were as expected: great.

The next day, August 3, was an overall check out of our anchoring, dinghy and generator. We headed over to The Les Cheneaux Islands, Cedarville and Government Bay where we anchored.

Cedarville is a place that’s close to my heart and in fact, a big part of my mom’s side of the family.

Our grandparents owned a fishing camp on LaSalle Island and I have good memories of sleeping overnight in the boathouse, waking up in the morning and catching fish for breakfast.

Cedarville and the surrounding Les Cheneaux Islands are similar to the Thousand Islands of New York or Cottage Country north of Toronto in Ontario.

The Les Cheneaux Islands are about 100 times smaller but the density of boat houses and old antique boats is the same.

There’s an antique boat show every weekend in August. We will miss it this year.

My grandfather‘s old boat is on display there every year. It used to be named after my mom, the Judy, but is now appropriately named Pretty Girl. It’s the first boat I ever drove. I used to play for hours on her as a child at the dock. I have a lot of fond memories of that boat.

After anchoring in Government Bay, we proceeded to launch the dinghy and get her ready for the dinghy’s check out run.

We bought a new lifting rig to hoist the dinghy. Recall that one of the dinghy’s lifting eyes failed when hoisting her last year, but we got that repaired. The lifting rig worked great.

We haven’t run the dinghy motor yet, so we wanted to make sure that that was healthy and in good shape before we headed off to Neebish Island and then into Canada.

The motor started on the third pull. It is works great.

That 10 foot dinghy goes really fast with a 15 horse outboard and one person on it. It’s a lot of fun.

We left Cedarville on a nice light breeze day and headed east towards the Saint Marys river between the upper peninsula of Michigan and Canada.

We turned left through a fleet of fishermen and headed up to St. Mary’s to Neebish Island, where my uncle and aunt live.

We anchored out front of their house and came in and had a little reunion dinner with their daughters.

I babysat for these fine folks long ago a few times, and I always remind my cousins that I was their favorite baby sitter. Strangely, they don’t remember it that way. It was a fun evening.

The next morning my uncle and aunt came out to the boat where I made pancakes.

We then took off, but not before a freighter named Walter J Mccarthy Jr. came through.

The McCarthy is one of the big ones on the Great Lakes, 1,000 feet long.

It came through the West Neebish Channel’s Rock Cut north of where my aunt and uncle live.

The history of the Rock Cut started in 1899 as an idea to make freighter traffic safer.

When transiting the St Mary’s River both upbound and downbound vessels transited what is now the Middle Neebish Channel, a narrow channel with blind turns and tricky currents.

Freighters were starting to be bigger and bigger.

Marine radios had not been placed in service yet.

Guglielmo Marconi had only invented radio communication in the 1890s, and the Marconi Company did not install wireless telegraphy stations on ships until around 1900.

Accidents were starting to happen with the narrow river and its blind turns.

There was a major tie-up in the middle channel when an old freighter, the Douglas Houghton ran aground and sunk in the channel delaying 200 vessels.

After the accident, congress passed an act in 1899 funding a survey of the Lower St. Marys to improve channel capabilities.

The association that ran freighters on the Great Lakes, the Lake Carrier Association, had previously recommended the West Neebish Channel through the Rock Cut.

In 1902 the Army Corps of Engineers Report was completed and work commenced on the channel in 1904, the same year they started digging the Panama Canal.

The 300-foot wide, 22-foot deep channel was completed in 1908.

It was deepened in 1932 & again in 1960 to its present 27-foot depth.

We waited for the McCarthy to pass through. She gave us the Great Lakes Salute (one long horn blast, two short horn blasts).

We followed her down the St. Mary’s River before we made a left turn at the end of Neebish Island towards St. Joseph Island, and then up the channel between Saint Joseph and Neebish Islands.

We reached Sugar Island and made a right turn into Canada. I put up the yellow quarantine flag, signifying we knew we were in foreign waters and had not yet checked into Customs.

I called in to Canadian customs and they directed us to go to a dock where we could do an official marina check-in.

We proceeded to Richards Landing and checked in.

Richard’s Landing is a cool little village with a gas dock and a customs check-in.

We got checked in by a friendly security office with Canada Customs.

I dropped the quarantine flag and raised the Canadian courtesy flag.

We were set.

Richards Landing has a fun little market. It also has an LCBO store which is the national liquor store in Canada or lease for Ontario.

We went ahead and got some provisions. Libbie got the food and I got the beer..

We cast off Richard’s landing and headed towards our anchorage.

We entered our Anchorage just east of Portlock island, and set anchor on a beautiful clear afternoon.

Libbie and I settled in, putting the boat away from the trip across Canada‘s border.

Libbie always has a fishing rod in her hand after we stop motoring. Libbie is always welcome to try and catch dinner. So far the fishing has proved to be fishing and not catching, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to stop. She gets a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of the process of fishing , trying to figure out what bait catches what fish, looking around to see if fish arising, what kind of fish are splashing, and just enjoying the general scenery.

After another fruitless effort by Libbie (she says there aren’t any fish to catch when that happens), she and I settled in for a drink before dinner and talked a bit.

We both feel extraordinarily lucky. Some days we can’t believe we’re doing what we are doing.

Selkie continues to be a great boat, very trustworthy as long as we take care of her and that’s what we do.