End of the Season Trip - Day 1

Today marks the end of our summer. Not literally, but as it marks the beginning of our season-ending final voyage, it is that. We try to get in one last, longer voyage to some place we haven’t been before. Last year it was north of Killarney and the La Cloche mountain fjords. This year we are trying for the North Channel. Of course, there are several factors affecting the eventual success of that notion, the major one being weather. But other things like work and such are factors. Fortunately, competition is fierce in my line of work. Hopefully, one of those other bastards will beat me out for jobs I have recently auditioned for. Priorities, you know. Anyway, I’m a going to attempt to log this trip and you can travel along with us, on the good ship Mary Mary, as we ply our way north and west. 

The Crew - Day of departure

 Day 1 – Sept. 15, 2019 Wright's Marina, Britt to The Bustard Islands

The first day is always full of work as we get the ship ready for long-term travel. We’re not the Endeavour to be sure, but we do have a cat on board and apart from that there’s just the two of us. Mister Hattie, head mouser, has had no work really as we have no mice. But we had to provision and do other tasks like filling the water tanks, pumping out the waste tanks, fuelling up and making sure we had enough alcohol on board. As you can imagine, the latter task was the most taxing. We had to hire some men for that. Healthy young stevedores that tend to gather on the piers and busk for work. One of them quit when he realized the intensity of the job.

Anyhow, along about 1330 hours we headed off up Byng Inlet, on route to The Bustard Islands. The weather is benign, with no wind to speak of and the often-tempestuous bay at rest and gently rolling us out to deep water. We don’t get out to the bigger bay very often as weather and waves can make it too problematic to attempt. We tend to stick to the Small Craft Channel, a buoyed waterway that uses the numerous islands as a shield from the environment. But today, encouraged by the soft breezes, we chanced it out on Georgian Bay. 

Out on Georgian Bay

 

It was, as I had hoped, a simple two-and-a-half-hour trip, skirting the ever-dangerous and perilous rocks and outcrops that have lured many a pleasure-boater to their doom. (Not really, but you do have to watch out.) Then we ducked into what I am calling the Northeast Channel cove in The Bustards and anchored in about 23 feet of water, tucked behind a small island.

The anchorage - The Bustards

We have been pretty much alone since then except for a brief incursion by an O.P.P. patrol boat that came in the narrow channel, heaving up a huge wake that made us rock and roll. Smiling, the officer asked us how long we were staying. We gave a vague answer and he was on his way. Brooke speculated that the reason the boat was there at all was because of the equally svelte female officer that was seated beside him. I guess they had to hove-to somewhere else.

The evening is grand with a fine sunset peering through a gap in the islands and we had cedar-planked salmon with asparagus for dinner, cooked on the portable BBQ. So far so good. Tomorrow promises more of the same and we may motor on further than usual as it is so hospitable. 

Planked Salmon on the barbie

Next episode: Cappie falls off the boat. Knock on wood.

Blueberry Picking in Black Bay

 by Brooke

July 24^th. (I cannot believe it is July 24^th).The Keyhole, Georgian Bay.

The Keyhole anchorage, Georgian Bay

You could say I am brown as a berry now. Although I can’t say I have seen any naturally brown berries. Today I spent two hours on the Island picking blueberries. It’s not such a simple thing, hunting the elusive blueberry.  Because of the terrain, you must watch your step rather than watch for berries. Step, climb, turn, step, stop, search. You don’t want to twist an ankle. Don’t want to step on or near a rattlesnake that might be sunning itself on a hot rock. And it is good practice to continuously scan the area for bears.  

Bear at Wilcox anchorage

Once you find a low bush of berries—you check again for a roaming bear before you crouch and bow your head. Check the water too, as one might be swimming over, island hopping—like Burt Lancaster did in The Swimmer, although that was pool hopping, and I guess Burt was looking for something other than berries (…or was he?).  There are bear droppings, there are otter droppings. The otters’ are white for the most part, composed of bleached crayfish shells and claws. The bear droppings are black lumps, speckled with some indigestible deep red berries or choke cherries.

Just so you know what bear poo looks like for safety sake

Some of the best blueberry bushes are in crevices, protected from the wind, and warmed by the heat in the rock. Other rich bushes are in hollows where the moss is thickest, sometimes you step or kneel upon a moss bed that is ten inches thick. I picture the bears liking that—walking on a lovely soft carpet. 

The wind was up from the south as I reached the cliff edges on the far side, I mostly followed the edges, almost circumnavigating the island—but it is not a round isle, it is more like a character from the Cyrillic alphabet, like Ѯ or Ԡ, with extra loops added on.

It is a contemplative practice, berry picking. Aside from the bear and snake and Poison Ivy regard, my mind wanders to many things. At one point I noticed that the tips of my fingers were purple. That brought Phil to mind, Phil in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, where I spent three summers performing at the Ship’s Company Theatre. When the blueberry season was on in Cumberland County, Phil worked the fields. His whole fingers were purple. But he said it wasn’t due to picking the berries, it was due to the colour added to the pesticide that he was required to spray on them. 

Phil was lean and likely incredibly strong, perhaps in his late sixties—but who knows, with his lifestyle he may have just been thirty-two. He had a very gaunt, bearded face and bright blue-green eyes. As he spent months outside, his skin was the colour of iron rust, with as I said, purple fingers. Phil spent every night in the Glooscap Tavern on the highway that went up through River Hibbert. (*Anyone should get a prize if they can name the river that runs through the town of River Hibbert. I’ll put the answer at the bottom of this post...but no prize. Well, I said 'should'.)

Phil would sit alone at one of the small tables, with a small glass and a pitcher of Keith’s and when that was almost empty he’d order another pitcher. I never saw him eat.  Phil was a very quiet man, & seemed docile. He paid attention, and I think he appreciated us Ship’s Company Players because we were different and open. Phil was the only one of the locals who stood up against a small swarm of Barflies trying to pick a fight with one of the actors, Mxolisi “Welcome” Ngosi, a large, dark-black-skinned, lovely man from Soweto.  I wasn’t at the tavern that night, as I had too many lines to learn, but I heard that Welcome was surrounded and pushed around by these guys. Welcome had seen enough violence and stupidity to fill all of their lifetimes, and tried to reason with the louts. Phil came over and punched one of them, or threatened to punch them and, alongside the other theatre folk, he broke up the gang. 

Mxolisi "Welcome" Ngosi

When he’d had his fill of Keith’s, he’d hitch a ride out with anyone who was going along the road to Fox River, about a 15 minute drive west. He lived in a big house beside the road with his mother. I spent a month or so in Port Greville, which was the next settlement after Fox River. (The local pronunciation of Port Greville sounded like “Por-gurvill” or “Pork-er-ville”.)  Sometimes Phil would ask me for a lift from the Glooscap.  It was a dark drive past Diligent River then to Fox River where I’d drop him; then, just a few minutes farther along was the street lamp by the church in Porkerville. I was staying in an aluminum shack on Brook Street, which smelled toxic. It smelled like burnt carpet-glue and bug-killer and tar. The highway eventually goes on to Advocate Harbour. It's a beautiful drive.

The next summer that I saw Phil he gave me a hug. That’s how I know how strong he was.  He was used in the play that second season, to be a pallbearer in the prologue of David French’s play, Of The Fields, Lately.  

Waiting to go onstage with Phil

Well, that was a little voyage into the past.  Wandering rhythm, wandering mind: picking and sorting berries and memories. I found what I have decided to term a “pie-bush” of blueberries, tucked down on a narrow plateau on one of the cliffs facing south west. It was laden with very plump berries—so fat they looked farmed. It was probably saved from the bears because of it’s location, but it wasn’t too difficult for me to get to.

I took some photos of the bear paths around the island. The paths are handy to come across because generally they will allow you the easiest route from here to there. Unless of course you are on one of the paths between a mother and her cub. 

While I was moving around the island, through the junipers, around the boulders, and across the domes of granite, I thought of the recent “Pokemon Go”craze, that has hit Canada, and wondered what the thought processes were—certainly not contemplative—but the choreography was probably similar to what I was doing.

Pokemon searchers looking for a fad that won't die in 5 months

I find that the scratch of the juniper doesn’t trouble me anymore, nor does the stickiness of passing through a spider web, as I know the discomfort will pass—I notice it though, how easy it is to disturb a habitat. The Sandhill Cranes are croaking nearby. Five flew over a little while ago. Prehistoric flight. 

Sandhill Crane in flight

(The river that passes through River Hibbert is named the River Hibbert River.)

On The Hard... Again

It is November 1^st, 2014 and we just heard the first reports on the radio of snow flurries downtown. Seems a bit early really, but there’ll probably be another warmish spell. There usually is.

Heading past Point Au Baril Lighthouse

Mary Mary is ‘on the hard’ now in Britt, Byng Inlet, Ontario at Wright’s Marine. We finally made it to Britt after being weathered in for a few days and then forced to anchor in Kitsilano Bay, near Pointe Au Baril, waiting for the waves on Georgian Bay to subside and for the wind to give us hope. It did though, finally, and we motored out into the blue and with an off-shore wind and calm waters we made it across the Hang Dog Reef in good time and then navigated the hairpin turn at Hang Dog Channel and entered into some of the best landscape we’ve encountered thus far.

Part of Hang Dog Channel

The waters are fairly shallow through the inside route but the higher water-level overall this year helped us and despite one or two marker surprises (not where they were marked on my two-year old charts) it was uneventful. We passed a pretty large working boat slowly making its way between the islands but not much else, even when we left sheltered waters and made the last 7 mile hop on open water towards Byng Inlet. But the weather was remarkably nice with sun pouring down around and smooth waters. We only passed one other boat, headed in the other direction, in the narrow channel towards Byng. We both slowed down and, ten feet apart or so, had a short, jovial conversation, remarking on the terrific conditions and wishing each other well.

It is an amazing phenomenon of these waters that even when you are several miles out, the water in some places is only 8 or 9 feet deep. Many rock shoals can be seen just a few metres off the beaten track and cormorant and gull inhabited rocks jut out into the air every now and then. But the route is well-maintained and we never really felt threatened. Of course, it would be a lot different in harsher weather when you might be getting pushed around a bit off the line. 

Byng Inlet from the air

But such was not the case for us, fortunately, and even though we had been relatively bored waiting out the weather and a little stressed because our time window had been quickly shrinking, the eventual journey was fascinating. It overwhelmed us with a sense of joy and satisfaction even as we were now realizing just how close the end of the season was getting to be. As we motored the final stretch around the point leading into Byng Inlet, the weather started picking up behind us and we were happy to make the smoother waters of the Inlet itself. We motored the two or three miles down the inlet, eventually arriving at Wright’s Marina where we would be spending the winter.

We were greeted by the owner/manager of the marina, Graham Lacey and given a slip on the eastern dock where a boat had just been taken out. Wright’s is a very easy-going place, professionally run and maintained with the care that only a family-run business can be,  and we were quickly settled in and enjoying the dying rays of the afternoon sun. I was returning to Toronto for work having already ferried the truck up to the marina from Parry Sound (Graham, the owner, had actually given me a ride in his car down to Parry Sound where he lived. It’s about an hour away.) Although we had originally planned for me go and then return for the final haul-out, we decided instead for all of us to go back, cats included, and then Brooke and I would return later to do the painful chore.

Wright's Marina, Byng Inlet

When we returned a few days later, we had three days to do the winterizing, clean out the boat and settle things with the marina. (We actually left a day early because it was becoming demoralizing.) So we began the now-familiar routine of oil-changing and such and on the final day, we travelled over to the gas-dock for a final pump-out and shortly thereafter the big, red hydraulic trailer backed down the ramp and we were hauled out. We have decided this year not to shrink-wrap and instead covered the bright-work on the rails with the old fire-hose linings that we had obtained last year from the Toronto Fire Dept. It had worked extremely well at Sound Boat Works so we are fairly confident we will be okay. It is a little more exposed this year, but the cost, for us, was just too prohibitive.

Now it’s just a simple matter of waiting 6 months for spring.

OMG.

Mary On The Hard