North Star on the Great Loop Journey: The Pool to Little Current

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.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

The Pool to Little Current

We are tied at the town dock in Little Current, sitting at Anchor Inn Hotel using the Internet and having a cold one. We were anchored in The Pool at the end of Baie Fine for the last two nights and we had no cell phone or Internet access.
The Pool is 9 miles at the end of Baie Fine and used to be a popular anchorage (N46 02.653' and W081 28.698'). The first night there were 3 of us anchored and we had the pool to ourselves last night. The water is warm but there are a lot of weeds so boats that take external water don't like that. It was a chore getting the anchor back on board with all the weeds on the rode. It was worth it for all the activities available here. There a myriad of walking trails that lead to various lakes. One trail follows a creek bed and winds up to aptly named lake Topaz. The water in Topaz lake is a topaz colour and the water is 80 degrees with no weeds, fish or algae. A short climb further past lake Topaz you are standing on the quartz cliffs with a spectacular view of the Pool below. All trails are part of Killarney Provincial Park and are used by the really fit canoeist who can climb and carry large loads for a long portage. Too strenuous for we old folks.
Jerry caught several small fish for a good feed but the big one got away. Perhaps the Captain was distracted by the folks who came to chat by dinghy and when they were leaving the dinghy got away from them and the man went flying backwards in the water. The wife managed to get it under control and came back to pick him up. No pictures just a good laugh.
We had a huge turtle spend the afternoon at our boat which discouraged me from swimming too much. Jerry was quite taken with it and fed it and christened it George.
Some Americans told us about a cruisers net that broadcast on VHF radio channel 71 out of Little Current. They give you the weather and some news before they ask the cruisers to call in with their boat name and location. I called in the last two mornings. It is kind of neat to hear where everybody is.
We learned about a cruisers pot luck dinner tonight here at the dock so we will try to attend before we go out to anchor. We will probably stay around Little Current for the next 2 days.