Thursday - July 29, 2009

July 29, 2010
Today we departed Penetang for Indian Harbour. Weather was cool and sunny. We travelled out through the Inner and outer harbor, turned to port and travelled up the west side of Beausoleil Island which is a federal park. Many many years ago, I took my open water certification at a YMCA camp located on Beausoleil, Camp Queen Elizabeth. Brenda was there also, 8 months pregnant with Laura and it was hot. Unfortunately, Brenda looked like a beached whale.

At the north end of Beausoleil, we passed through the Minnicognashene Channel an joined up with the main channel which ultimately will take us north to the North Channel. It is well marked but you do want to stay in the middle of the channel, for as we learned last year, variance to the port or starboard could lead to boat meeting rock which is not good.
It is amazing how many cottages are located along the route, some on little small islands and which are quite isolated and can only be accessed by boat. We also saw the monument to Samuel de Champlain along the channel commemorating his journey along this same route in the 1600’s in a canoe. It is daunting to think how those early explorers travelled through these waters without any charts or guidance. The place is loaded with dead ends and dead ends which lead nowhere, not to think of the insects that were there looking for food.
We followed the main channel through Muskoka Landing Channel and crossed open water to Kerr Island and marker Buoy C127 avoiding Monument Channel. We travelled through it two years ago and it is quite pretty and narrow, but I decided we could always visit again later.
As I continued along the main channel, I suddenly determined that we had missed the entrance to Indian Harbour. Turning around we went back to marker 127/1 and turned to starboard to enter Indian Harbour which is a beautiful sheltered area. We went into the harbor and found a place to lower our anchor. Unfortunately, I forgot to tighten the gypsy on the winchwhen I put the second anchor. Brenda untied the Bruce Anchor and it started falling freely with all the chain. Before I realized what was happening and could tighten the gypsy, about 250 feet of our 300 feet of chanin was on the bottom the harbor in 18 feet of water. The fortunate thing was I did stop it before all the chain was down there, and although it was covered with mud, we did recover it. I probably could recover if it had all fallen down, because I did bring my dive gear and it would have been a simple matter to attach a plastic bag to the free end and float it to the surface where we could recover it and bring it back on board. In any case no harm was done.
We then set anchor at 45 02 015 N 80 00 520 W and settled in for the night.