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 10, 2011

Week end at Big Chief's Island

What a party place this is. All the locals congregate in the North Bay off Big Chief's Island and raft up together to chat, drink listen to music and plain relax. The weather is fabulous, the water temperature is 80 degrees and everyone walks on hard packed sand up to their waist in water going socializing from boat to boat.  Ours is an unusual boat so everyone wants to know where we are from and where we are going. These of course are trick questions. We tell them we are from Newfoundland and we are going to the Bahamas.  They then want to know if we are lost. We just say well we will just follow the pointy end of the boat and we should eventually get there.  A large Georgian Steel houseboat pulled in late yesterday with music blaring and young people dancing. Interesting to watch!
Jerry finally caught a prize fish, he is a keeper and so is the fish.  It was a 7-8 pound large mouth bass, twenty inches long with a 6 inch girth.  We had some of it for breakfast yesterday and when he comes back from his early fishing foray this morning, we will have the rest of it.  Hope he brings lunch as well! He was so proud he waited until everyone was up so he could show it off. It is succulent!
Jerry was able to repair our dinghy. We had it repaired professionally in Kingston and it was guaranteed for life. Short life because the bottom delaminated from the transom the first time we put it in the water.   Jerry was able to glue it with 5200 sealant and he screwed some aluminum strips on to make it more sturdy.  It has been in the water 24 hours and seems to be doing the job.  We had a short ride in it yesterday and all seems well.  Now we are working on the water system.  The charcoal filter that Captain Jerry installed seems to be leaking.  He bought a new one and it is leaking, back to the store on Monday to replace that. They say cruising is repairing your boat in exotic places. I am not sure about the exotic but it is in fun places and we are holding true to the tradition.
No fish for lunch so I will go and enjoy a bass breakfast.

Locals gathering at Big Chief's Island

Local colour at Big Chief's


The big one that did not get away

The bay can hold many boats
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