Saturday, August 3, 2019
Wright’s Marina on Old Mill Island, Britt, ON
Under a clear blue sky, we departed Big Sound Marina at 8:40am for our 58-mile trip to Wright’s Marina on Old Mill Island in Byng Inlet near the town of Britt, Ontario. (How’s that for a mouthful to describe a location!) We followed the Small Craft Route for most of the way observing mile after mile of water, rocks and trees, with very few cottages along this section of the route.
Today we’d encounter an 8-mile section of the route that we would need to avoid due to the size of our boat. It was going to be too big to make some of the sharp turns and narrow cuts through a “length-restricted” eight miles of the Small Craft Route. When we got to that point, we headed to water that could handle our depth (3.75 feet) and length (47 feet) and beam (width, 15 feet). Given what we’d already gone through along the previous sections of the route, it was hard to imagine what that part of the route must be like!
Throughout the day the clouds gathered slowly and by the time we got near our destination, the sunny sky was gone. We traveled off the Small Craft Route into Byng Inlet for about 2.5 miles under clouds yet comfortably warm temperatures. The homes along the inlet ranged from trailers to small cottages to million dollar mansions. The scenery was magnificent and we arrived at Wright’s Marina around 2:30pm. It is an extremely well-run, family-owned and operated marina. The current owners/operators are Karrie and Graham Lacey, the family’s third-generation running the business. The marina is also the only repair facility for larger cruisers and sailboats between Parry Sound and Killarney, so they get transient boats that are in need of work, as well as over-nighters like us.
The very small town of Britt is located only 1.5 -miles away. Having been warned about the enormous biting fly population that comes out at dusk, we decided to not walk to town. Other Loopers that we knew who’d already been at Wright’s Marina a couple days, told us how the flies even got the better of them while riding their bikes to town for dinner. Hence, we concluded that eating our own enchiladas on-board our boat would be for the best. We risked a walk of about 50 yards to an ice cream shop down the road from the marina. Even that short walk before dusk (it was cloudy) resulted in flies bothering us the entire way! Ugh! It was definitely an inside evening with doors-and-windows-closed kind of night.
One of the descriptions of this marina said it was “situated in the beautiful, yet rugged, Canadian Shield landscape.” By this point we had seen quite a bit of this amazingly gorgeous Canadian Shield country. You may ask (like Sue did), “What is this Canadian Shield, anyway?” Well, let us tell you…
[There is a drawing of the Canadian Shield at the end of the photos section]
According to the online Canadian Encyclopedia:
The Canadian Shield refers to the exposed portion of the continental crust underlying the majority of North America (which) extends from northern Mexico to Greenland and consists of hard rocks at least 1 billion years old. With the exception of the Canadian Shield, the rocks ... are buried deep within the continent and covered by soil and other material.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/shield
and Wikipedia:
The Canadian Shield, also called the Laurentian Plateau, or Bouclier canadien (French), is a large area of exposed Precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks (geological shield) that forms the ancient geological core of the North American continent ... Composed of igneous rock resulting from its long volcanic history, the area is covered by a thin layer of soil ... it stretches north from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, covering over half of Canada; it also extends south into the northern reaches of the United States... as the Adirondack Mountains ... and the Superior Upland ... The Canadian Shield is more than 3.96 billion years old. The Canadian Shield once had jagged peaks, higher than any of today's mountains, but millions of years of erosion have changed these mountains to rolling hills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield
Note: The Superior Upland is west and south of Lake Superior
and according to britannica.com: Precambrian rocks are
... those that are more than 542 million years old... The shield was rifted apart between Canada and Greenland by seafloor spreading ... between 90 and 40 million years ago... The Greenland Shield is largely ice-covered.
https://www.britannica.com/place/North-America/The-Canadian-Shield
So there you have it - The Canadian Shield!