M/V MAERIN

Our first day heading back through the Trent-Severn pretty much duplicated the trip west, our stopover point, Swift Rapids Lock 43. The highlight of that leg of course, is the Big Chute marine railway. We were the last boat loaded, and just fit with our stern hanging over the end of the platform a bit. […]

Bread crumbs, indeed. Our travels on this cruise, in fact, every time the boat moves, are guided by our chartplotting program. For non-boater readers, it can be likened to Google Maps. Our position is shown in real time overlaid on a chart of the area. If it shows waterways, it’s a chart, maps show roads. […]

Our tour of Georgian Bay and North Channel complete, we returned to Beacon Bay Marina at Penetanguishene. Our route took us on the small craft channel. The route is very scenic, with cottages at every point of the compass. One landmark we heard many locals mention was “Henry’s”, a famous popular restaurant, known for it’s […]

Heading southeast along the small craft route took us a more scenic route. The scenery is quite stunning, and the trip was very pleasant in spite of lots of twists and turns around lots of rock! The chart is well-marked, and the channels are well-bouyed. Not always the case; early mariners and explorers marked hazards […]

Covered Portage in our wake, we headed for Killarney. Since we’ll be covering a lot of the same area, we planned (loosely- we rarely do an itinerary, per se) on our route west to skip over some areas by taking a more direct route, and planned to visit those areas on the return trip. The […]

Covered Portage is an anchorage that was recommended by locals we met in Penetang as a place to put on our “visit” list. The anchorage is a bay with a dog leg opening that the guide books and the reviews on ActiveCaptain describe entering the cut exercising caution and a bow lookout. Without actually entering […]

We departed the Benjamins on Monday the 21st making the short 15 nm jump to Gore Bay. Gore Bay is a small community on Manitoulin Island, with a short main street and downtown. It’s a laid back small town feel, the marina facilities are well kept with relatively new floating docks, new bathroom facilities and […]

Weather finally started to cooperate as we headed to the Benjamins, an easy cruise from Little Current. The Benjamin Islands are a circular grouping of islands unique in their geology. Their pink granite is worn smooth from glacial action and has an appearance that, from a distance looks like sand dunes. We chose to anchor […]

We departed Baie Fine under overcast skies, cool, damp and windy! Winds were out of the WSW at about 15kt, but a tolerable cruise day to head to Little Current, gateway to the North Channel. There’s no other way into the North Channel without heading around the south shore of Manitoulin Island and traveling west, […]

From Killarney we headed toward Baie Fine (pron. Bay Finn), a slender bay that extends about 6 miles within the La Cloche range, mountains on both sides and relatively deep. Although locally promoted as a fjord, it’s close, but not as deep nor does it have the geological characteristics (or almost 1000 ft depth!) that […]