August 1, 2004 We are aboard Reverie back at our dock at Duncan Bay in Cheboygan, Michigan. When last we updated the site, we were on our last week of living at the dock and preparing for our summer cruise to lower Georgian Bay. We set sail on Sunday June 20 and just returned this past weekend after spending 28 nights at anchor. The locals tell us this has been a cooler-than-usual summer up here. Along with the cool temperatures and cloudy skies in late June, however, came some really great sailing wind. We scooted across the North Channel and began our Georgian Bay experience at the Alexander Inlet which is north of Parry Sound. On that first evening we saw a black bear lumbering up the side of the channel. Since then we saw a raccoon, several deer, a couple of mink, a cute snake, an eagle, an osprey and lots of cranes, loons, herons and other waterfowl including, of course, the Canada geese. Our trip took us as far south as Midland where we were hosted by friends Harold and Susan Darch whom we had met through the Great Lakes Cruising Club (GLCC). From Midland we ventured back up to Beausoleil Island and the Georgian Bay Islands National Park before heading west to the Bruce Peninsula. The marriage was tested in the harbor at Meaford as the spinnaker block at the top of the mast was cracked and needed replacement. Bobbie was selected as the one to go up in the Bosun's Chair and make the repair while Jim did the winching. (It was a gorgeous clear evening and the view from 50 feet up was terrific!) Surviving that and three more days at anchor, our last provisioning stop was at Tobermory before we headed north to Killarney. July 10-15 found us joining the annual GLCC Rendezvous (along with about 100 other boats) which was held in Killarney this year. As always this is an opportunity to meet boating friends from all around the Great Lakes. And for the second year in a row, Jim was chairman of a Wilderness Rally following the Rendezvous. For this event we had 35 boats anchored up in McGregor Bay for three days of the following week. The weather was very cooperative allowing for kayak and dinghy trips, hikes, blueberry picking and very sociable shore parties. On July 22nd as we came west through the swing bridge into Little Current, we made note of the fact that it was on June 22nd that we had gone through the bridge going eastward. Another six nights at anchor, many blueberries picked, and a night at the marina in Thessalon has brought us back to our home base. We were somewhat surprised that we weren't able to connect our laptops to the Internet as we had imagined, thus no updates to the website until now. But we were delighted to find that the public libraries in Canada, even the tiny little harbor towns, had computers that we could use. This allowed us to keep up with reading our email and to access our credit card accounts and take care of all our banking, bill paying etc. Captain Jim has been hinting at a million little jobs the First Mate will need to be doing while we are here in port -- everything from helping with varnishing to polishing the inside teak. This seems an awful lot like what I'd be doing if it were a regular house except there's not a flowerbed and the floor space to scrub is a whole lot less -- I guess I'll manage. We are getting settled in to life aboard the boat and finding it really neat to have everything right here with us all the time. So for the next couple of weeks we'll be making our final preparations for the trip south. Around the middle of August we'll be heading down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Our plans still call for us to be ready to head down the Illinois River by early or mid September. We expect the Internet access to be a lot more favorable here in the States, so look for another update in several weeks. In the meantime don't hesitate to let us hear from you.
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