The anchorage we selected provided for a calm and restful evening. The wind clocked around 180 degrees overnight, but the anchor had dug deep into the sandy mud bottom as evidenced by the sediment-covered flukes when it was raised. It took a while to clean it off, but no worries. Its all part of cruising. We traced our track from yesterday out of the cove and entered back into Georgian Bay, just beyond Red Rock Light. The waterfowl along the way were plentiful and interesting. Once in the Bay, we set a waypoint to Killarney and engaged the autopilot. Soon the shoreline disappeared and we were in open water with not another boat in sight, roughly 10 miles from shore. We enjoyed one of our final days in Canada with a few pictures. Barry ventured out of the pilot house and got a little sun. I spent time on Fiberglass Beach reading.
Just when we needed a little excitement, in the distance we saw a red mass in the water. Barry looked through the binoculars and determined it was a clump of discarded mylar balloons. Loving a challenge, and a bit bored, we detoured slightly to scoop up the trash. Barry pulled up slowly and I grabbed them on the first attempt. On some days, these little things end up being the big things. A few boat chores were accomplished. I vacuumed up fly carcasses left from yesterday and Barry cleaned the inside of the windshield of fly guts. Thankfully, with the wind shift the flies were not as bad today. Comfortably isolated in the middle of Georgian Bay in deep water, I took over the helm while Barry caught a nap. As we neared the entrance to Killarney Channel, we took one last selfie before relieving the autopilot of command and going back to hand-steering. The Killarney East Red Rock Point Light marked the entrance to the busy channel.
Signs welcomed us to town and advertised marinas and restaurants. Colorful rental kayaks, SUPs, and pedal boats lined the shore. A large black mound in the water turned out to be a dog swimming to retrieve his toy. We docked across the channel from the town and, after a quick change of clothes, took the water taxi over to the marina office to check in.
We are at the Sportsman's Inn and Marina. The inn is a bright white building with large red hanging baskets lining the front porch. We walked down the road to stretch our legs, enjoying the old buildings and landscaping. We returned to the marina and had dinner and then went back down the street for a final serving of Canadian ice cream. We were trying to use up our Canadian currency and we did a pretty good job. While waiting for the water taxi we met up with Debbie and Ron from Bucket List and shared stories about our experiences since we last saw them in Chambly. We look forward to seeing them again further along the Loop.
We returned to Crossroads to find that two smaller boats had been packed in beside us. We hope to leave by 7:30 tomorrow morning and make our way to North Channel, timing one bridge opening and then navigating a stretch of strong current. We will drop anchor somewhere along the way and (hopefully) get the dinghy down for a bit of exploration. Our plan is to enter back into the United States on Tuesday and fly home to Richmond on Thursday for a quick visit.
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