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.























Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Blind River

We left Turnbull Island after a nice calm night.  All the boats had turned completely around on their anchor.  Good thing it was a nice sandy bottom for good holding.
We went 10 miles to Blind River where we tied up at the government dock which is reserved for fishing boats.  It is a solid concrete wall with nice steel bollards.   Two old timers drove up to us immediately to ask about our trip and North Star.  They told us that the two boats at the dock were theirs and only two other fishing boats were expected to come in today so we could stay as long as we wanted.  Good, we only wanted to go reprovision and get propane. Blind River has everything you need.  A good Value Mart grocery store, an M&Ms for ready made frozen food, beer and liquor store and a dollar store.  They also have hardware, Bargain Shop and Tim Horton's. We reprovisioned and went to wait out the rain in Timmy's. Nice to be back to civilization.
We thought we were going to be asked to leave by the OPP that pulled up but they were interested in a motorist who was parked at the dock.  A couple in a motor home pulled in for the night and we stayed as well.  We spent the better part of the evening at the Public Library.
Today we left in calm water and fog to go to Thessalon.  This is the most exposed part of Lake Huron as we are leaving the North Channel.  We would rather be in fog than wind since it gives us a chance to practice using the radar.  The radar is showing that we are pulling our dinghy.  It works!
 fishing boat dock in Blind River

Leaving Blind River in the fog...the Marina
Posted by at

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)