Dunks Bay is wide, with no hazards at the exit. What if we left an hour before daylight? That looked better. An hour before that was better still. Eventually, I had to back our departure up to one a.m. to get an answer that would allow us to sail the whole way there. One a.m. is not too bad, I guess. The bad part is that I would have to get up before that in order to be ready to leave then. That made it fifty-fifty whether it was even worth trying to go to bed at all the night before.
When my alarm went off, it was a relief. I was getting sick of trying to pretend I was asleep. Maryanne stayed tucked in bed until the last possible second, which was when I needed her to join me briefly for the anchor retrieval process. I could have done that one myself, but Near Boat was so near that I didn't want to risk drifting into him while I was away from the helm with my head in the anchor locker.
On deck, during the last of my preparations, I was a little worried when I noticed that there seemed to be no breeze whatsoever, instead of the eighteen knot northwesterlies that had been predicted. We upped anchor anyway, since we were ready to go and at least one of us was too hopped up on coffee to entertain going back to sleep. It worked out fine. It turns out Dunks Bay is better protected from wind from that direction than I thought. Once we were less than a mile from Near Boat, a nice tailwind filled in that quickly made it pointless to be running an engine.
Maryanne went back to bed so she could be rested for the inevitable moment when I start flagging and need her to take over. An hour or so later, the wind had backed sufficiently for me to switch to the spinnaker. I was able to keep it flying until just outside our planned anchorage at MacGregor Harbour. Even more amazingly, I had managed to stay awake the whole way, with just enough sail tweaking and star gazing to keep me alert. When I started the engine under her bunk, Maryanne emerged after almost a full night of sleep.
Now we had a problem. Once the anchor was set, Maryanne was rested up and raring to go explore, while I was fading fast. Worse still was that the predicted flat calm in the afternoon was promising to be some glorious weather – much better than the next day. We came up with the compromise that I would take a short nap while she stares sadly at the wall for a few hours.
The sun was out on our arrival - and is that a beaver lodge we see near shore?
The afternoon was indeed gorgeous. We boarded the kayak and immediately paddled a couple of miles to Pine Tree Point, out in the greater Mellville Sound. There, we joined the last remnants of a quad road and headed back toward Begonia's anchorage on foot. Maryanne's ankle was still playing up, so we had no intention of going all the way there, but we did get as far as the extensive prairieland in the interior of the Cape Croker peninsula.
The area is First Nations land (Neyaashiinigmiing: Home of the Chippewas of Nawash) that has never been ceded to Canada or anyone else. We figured in such an undisturbed envionment we might have an above-average chance of finding a bear cub to play with, or maybe a beaver to splash. (We did make sure we were allowed ashore. The only provisions were that we don't do anything disrespectful and to always let the animals win during horseplay. Also, please don't touch or try to engage in horseplay with any actual horses, they belong to people.) The animals were all laying low for the afternoon, so we never saw anything too unusual other than a small wasp nest, but the biology of the prairie flora was interesting.
The Niagara Escparment cliffs poke up from time to time
It's always nice to step ashore and find a trail we can explore
Bird (Great Crested Flycatcher), fossils (??), and flowers (Jewelweed) were just a few of the finds
I don't recall ever seeing a Paper Wasp nest before - this was quite beautiful and about the size of a cantelope melon
We returned to Begonia respectably worn out. As I was going for a brief, rejuvenating swim in the bay, I heard a call from a truck on shore.
"Hey, Home Slice!"
Uh oh. Am I in trouble?
"The chipmunk started it!"
"What‽"
"Nothing!"
"Did you get smoked‽"
"No, he was just a little guy!"
"What‽"
"Nothing!"
"Do...you...have...any...smokes‽"
That makes more sense. "No, sorry!"
"Okay. Have a good one!" Then he drove off before I could tell him about the alcohol and the expired prescription pain meds.
That night and the next day, we had some thunderstorms move through. These were real doozies that dumped so much rain sometimes that we couldn't even see the shore. Gusts into the thirties blew from several different directions, with lots of close lightning. Sometimes, we could feel the thunder with our feet through the hulls. I offered to let Maryanne get the kayak ready, but she said she didn't feel like going out since we had seen so much yesterday.
A lovely sunset on our last night at MacGregor Bay
{Note if you do visit the area, the harbour just to the South-West (Sydney Bay) - is much more active, with the Cape Croker camp site, and on weekends the Interprative center has various cultural experiences and tours avaialble.}
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