North Star on the Great Loop Journey: The Benjamin Islands

Preparing for the trip

Captain Jerry has been making the final preparations to North Star, our 32 foot Cape Island down east trawler. We are anxious to leave our landlubber lives behind and begin our long awaited journey around the Great Circle. Join us as we travel 10, 000 kilometers: through the historic Trent Severn Waterway; the pristine waters of Georgian Bay; the North Channel of lake Huron; and hop from beach to beach on lake Michigan. We will visit Chicago and begin our trek along the rivers: Illinois; upper Mississippi; Ohio; Cumberland: Tennessee; Tenn-Tom Waterway and the Black Warrior. We will have transited through 68 locks at this juncture. We have chosen the inner route from Mobile Alabama to Tarpon Springs Florida and the shorter Ocheechobee Waterway to reach the East coast of Florida. We will skip over to the Bahamas to wait out the winter before heading North on the Atlantic Inter Coastal Waterway.
The 10 years of researching and planning are finally at an end and we invite you to come along on our adventure.

Friday, July 29, 2011

The Benjamin Islands

The Benjamins are certainly the most spectacular anchorages we have stayed in to date. Smooth pink granite rocks with lots of trees and even a sandy beach. South Benjamin is the preferred anchorage but it was too crowded for our liking so we are anchored at North Benjamin near our own sandy beach (N46 05.448' and W082 15.075'). There are few cottages in the North Channel so walking ashore is permitted. I even found enough blueberries for pancakes. We gathered wood and had a nice campfire again last night.

The crew of North Star will not go hungry, the captain caught two large mouth bass within 15 minutes. He had his fishing line in the water with a hook and worm and luckily we were aboard when the pole started dancing in the holder. I even caught the fight on camera.
Enough of this peaceful wilderness, today we have to go to Spanish to reprovision.