Cruise 2006 Day 5 Mill Lake

Day 5 Monday July 3rd Mill Lake

Today we are just going to chill out. We were anticipating that Instead Of would finally join us on the trip and then we'd head west. But we end up relaxing, floating on the water, and going on another dinghy tour.

click images to enlarge

Miles Today:
1 1/2 via dinghy

Destination:
Staying Put Today

Stops:
Several Islets

Relaxing at Mill Lake

It was a sunny, and warm morning with a bright blue sky as we woke on this Monday in Mill Lake. There were light winds as I fired up the generator at 10:00 to make coffee to go with the great breakfast Gina started cooking.

Bacon, eggs, and toast always taste better while sitting on the back deck of your boat!

This was shaping up to a nice relaxing day in the sun and water.

At 11:15 we cleaned up the boat some and then blew up the inflatable lounge chairs. These floating chairs are a necessity right up there with a dinghy. They’ve got a fold up section for your feet so you can stay dry or let your feet dangle if you want. Complete with cup holders and protective pockets (good for a camera or cigar), it’s like drifting around in a nice Lazy-Boy.

A Beautiful Morning

The water temperature gauge showed a very comfortable 76.6 degrees, and Gina hooked up three lines together to form over 75 feet of tether to the boat. Now this was lounging at its finest! We drifted around from 12:30 to 2:00. Gina was reading some while I was just enjoying the view.

I had the handheld VHF radio with me, still hoping to hear from Instead Of at any time now. I would push off the rock islet and ‘zoom’ out into the lake, allowing the winds and currents to carry me back. Quite relaxing indeed!

We then decided to go on another dinghy tour. This time we headed north up the Lake close to the western shore. We stopped after about ¾ mile where there was a dock in front of what looked like a closed up cabin. After tying up, we took a walk around the property.

The small cabin was boarded up, but looked like it might have been used recently. It had a unique gravity feed water tank up on a hill behind the place, with a water line that ran on the ground to the lake. Interesting set up.

Shortly after we shoved back off in the dinghy, the motor quit. I attributed it to an air lock, restarted and headed east across the Lake. Again, it quit. It’s starting to look like low gas I was thinking. We may have had good luck running low on fuel in the boat, but after attempting to restart a few times, we weren’t as lucky. So, I ended up rowing us the ½ mile back to the boat, against the wind.

Extreme Lounging

At 3:30 I filled the motor from a two-gallon container in the transom locker. While we were at it, we glued on the mount for the front navigation light onto the bow of the dinghy. After all that rowing, it was an excuse for a nap (but then again, when on vacation you don’t need an excuse.)

A light rain awakened us at 5:30, so we put the glass up on the back deck. Gina started preparing dinner while I sat on the swim platform in my raincoat to enjoy a glass of Sheridan’s (a fine Canadian drink) and a cigar. I also changed the batteries in the handheld GPS.

Dinghy Tour

I started the generator at 6:30 so Gina could cook. It was overcast and still raining. Listened to the NOAA weather report for the Northern Lake Huron – Georgian Bay region: Winds west 10 knots changing to northwest. Increasing to 15-20 knots Tuesday. Showers and thundershowers ending overnight. The winds were to switch to north on Tuesday. Current reading at Killarney is winds west/southwest at 8 knots.

Dinner was served at 7:00, and what another nice meal Gina put together! We had Salmon patties with gravy sauce, Spanish rice, and tomatoes. After dinner I shaved with hot water as the rain was ending. Some blue sky was now appearing.

Still no Bill and Mary from Instead Of. We are now starting to think that it’s “possible” that they are running behind and decided to go straight to Killarney, and maybe even Mary Ann Cove. They might of bypassed Beaverstone Bay and Mill Lake in an effort to catch up with us. There is no cell phone reception up here and not hearing from them on the VHF made us perplexed.

So we decided to leave early tomorrow morning and stop in Killarney where we hoped to see if Sport n’ Life was there, and to fill the water tank and get a pump out. From there we would head to Baie Fine and stop at Mary Ann Cove and possibly end up at The Pool.

Gina tried to calculate the amount of Canadian cash we would need to spend on fuel in Canada before we got back to Michigan (Presque Isle was our intended ‘landing’). I used the chart plotter to estimate the miles based on each ‘scheduled’ leg of our route, and Gina punched it into her calculator. It was a little too taxing for my brain this evening. We watched “Walk the Line” on DVD to end the night before turning in at 12:30am.

Another Great Dinner

So Just Where The Heck Is Everyone Else? An update on the whereabouts of our friends.

Sport 'n Life at Killarney Monday

Instead Of Leaving Tobermory Sunday

Mytigood & Lime Cutter at Bad River

Although we didn't know this at the time ....

We had last left Sport n’ Life at Grand Bend on June 30^th. They stayed in Grand Bend another day before heading up to Tobermory on Saturday July 1^st, with a stop in Kincardine to take on fuel.

Mytigood and Lime Cutter we had talked to on the VHF radio on Saturday morning as they came around Cape Hurd after a nights’ stay in Port Elgin. They spent Saturday night in Tobermory.

Instead Of had left Leamington at 2:00am Saturday and went twelve straight hours to Kincardine. Talk about non-stop. And at night on top of it. Then Sunday morning they made their way to Tobermory.

Marc, Seth and Ingram from Sport n’ Life were riding around Tobermory Harbor when Instead Of pulled in to the Harbor. They had “heard of them” from the tales on our 2004 trip log on our web site, so they introduced themselves.

Lime Cutter and Mytigood left Tobermory Sunday and headed to Bad River for a couple of days. I had thought about making that leg with them during our planning sessions (went as far as plotting a course), but we were dead set on getting west this year and didn’t want to chance that anything would delay us from heading that far.

On Monday, July 3^rd, Sport n’ Life and Instead Of both left Tobermory, but Instead Of veered off shortly after leaving. A bad impeller caused overheating, and forced them back to Tobermory for repairs.

Sport n’ Life was headed up the eastern shore of Manitoulin Island to Killarney, using the course I had uploaded for him on his handheld GPS unit.

So on Tuesday Mytigood and Lime Cutter left Bad River and went though Beaverstone Bay and into Mill Lake.

Instead Of left Tobermory on Tuesday as well, and took the same route.

Looks like Mill Lake was the ‘convergence’ point for several of us on the 4^th of July as we readied to leave our private cove there, where on this Day 5 we had been for two days.

Day 5 July 3rd 2006			On to Day 6
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