Labour day weekend

Where to go, where to go? Sunny and warm, light winds. 12 Mile Bay or Hope Island? Hope is 3-4 hours, 12 Mile is 5, if not 6 hours, which would make for a long day on Monday, since we then would have to tack an extra 3.5 hours on to that because of the drive back home. Problem with Hope is that you can only anchor there when the winds are light, in any other condition you are exposed to waves. Big waves, with short intervals, and usually they will hit you in the side, so you roll. Hope is the northern of three islands in south eastern Georgian Bay (use google map and look at it all. Hope is that little one at the top), and the waves suddenly have to go through this relatively narrow channel and they can get pretty big there in no time. A couple once told us, that if you have a really good (meaning with lots of wind) sail there, you should not anchor there.
Mind you, all weather forecasters predicted light winds for the whole weekend, but do we really trust these people? This was the discussion of the week leading up to this long weekend.

We opted for Hope in the end. I had taken the Friday afternoon off and we arrived in the marina at 4. Left right away and dropped our anchor at 7. Water was calm, and we had a full moon.

The night is quiet, all is well.

A lot of sailboats arrived on Saturday, and by the end of the day we counted 29 sail boats and 4 power boats. Everybody was lured because of the good weather. Sometime during the night the boat started to roll a bit, but nothing to be alarmed about, and after all, all forecasters were in agreement, right?



Wake up, roll is gone. Turn on the radio to listen to the weather while making coffee and there it is "Winds from the SW 10 knots, increasing to 15 by evening". We decided to leave later in the morning after a blueberrie pancake breakfast hosted by Jim and Barb on Northern Dream, which then changed to "Let's leave now!" and we were not the only ones. The next day a boater who was anchored at Beckwith, an island around the corner, told us that it was a sight of beauty to see all these boats sail by.

Max kept his cool