Sunday, August 4, 2019

It was warm and sunny with a slight breeze as we departed Wright’s Marina at 8:35AM. We planned to travel 66 miles along the Small Boat Channel in Georgian Bay, weaving our way through more beautiful scenery of rocks, trees and water. There were some interesting names for channels and islands. I suppose you need to get creative with names when you have a few thousand islands to deal with.  A couple hours into our trip we entered a channel called Roger’s Gut (we double checked, it is Gut, not Cut). We don’t know who Roger is but we’re not sure if it was an honor or a joke to have a channel named after his gut?! Other names we noticed: Beaverstone Bay, Dead Island, Strawberry Island, Burnt Island, Tie Island, Tarpot Island, etc.

The windfarm we noticed the previous day stretched on for miles as our path wound around submerged rocks, at times getting close enough to get a good look at the wind turbines. There were two narrow channels without visual access from end to end that required “Securitee” calls before entering so we could avoid any boats coming from the opposite direction. We encountered plenty of other narrow areas due to unseen boulders below the water’s surface, so we took turns with the few oncoming boats to get through, though no “Secuitee” calls were needed.

We saw the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Caribou Isle, a 75-foot small buoy tender, which was busy working just outside the small boat channel (see photos). The fire warnings were as at the second highest level due to the lack of rain and every marina had it posted. One small island (not Burnt Island though that would have been appropriate) was covered by fire ravaged trees.

Every turn created another beautiful view for a photo (we ended up with over 200 pictures on this 66-mile trip). We’d heard of a rock formation called the “Crabby Indian” along Collins Inlet that was supposed to be easy to see. So when we reached that inlet around lunchtime we were looking for him, and there he was! We slowed to take a few pictures of him. If you try, you can pretty much see him in our photos, though he looks more impressive in person.

Our path continued another hour on Collins Inlet, followed by a brief 3-mile run on the open water of the Georgian Bay before entering Killarney Channel. We pulled into Killarney Sportsman Inn and Marina at 3:45pm. The marina operates on both sides of this channel. The north side of the channel is the town of Killarney with the Killarney Inn and Marina office and a few stores and restaurants on the main road along the waterfront. There appeared to be a requisite ice cream shop at every town we stopped at while in Canada. The south side of the channel has slips on George Island. There is no bridge to the island, so the marina runs a pontoon boat to get people back-and-forth across the channel. 

Bears are active in the area, so everyone was warned to be careful with any food laying around and to keep track of your pet. A couple people mentioned seeing a bear on our dock early in the day, but we did not get a chance to see one. We did come across their “calling cards” along the dock on our walk to the water shuttle pickup point. Needless to say, Bo was on a short leash when he went out for his nightly walk. 

Killarney is quaint little town with just under 400 people. We were able to stock up on a few supplies and grab dinner at the Sports Bar. It would have been easy to hang around Killarney for a couple days, but good weather was forecasted for the next day, so we decided to move along in the morning. Killarney marks the end of our travels on beautiful Georgian Bay and our transition into the North Channel.