Crazy Idea

Why not sail the sailboat?  After all, the engine is just the auxillary power.  The water leak into the transmission oil is small, so if we use the motor on a limited basis, there should be no harm done.  Besides, we never had an engine on the Hobie Cat and it didn’t pose a problem.

So, that’s what we did.  Instead of hanging out at the marina waiting for a part for the transmission we sailed to Killbear Provincial Park and Anchored in Kilcoursie bay.  We had light winds leaving Penetang around 6pm and had to tack numerous times on our way out to the open part of Georgian Bay as the winds just weren’t quite strong enough to sail tight to the wind.  Our NavPod mount for the helm chartplotter had come in that morning, so I installed it while Chrissy sailed and had it running just as the sun was going down.   As we rounded Giant’s Tomb Island the winds aligned for a close reach northward, so we abandoned our plans to anchor for the night at Beckwith Island to avoid a couple more hours of trying to make windward progress.  Around Midnight the winds increased to about 10 knots allowing us to make decent progress.  The winds died off around 3am and we were left with some slight waves and not enough wind to keep the sails full consistently.  It’s probably time to work on an easy to deploy preventer setup to make those conditions more bearable and much gentler on the rig.  By 5am we were in the Waubuno Channel and the light winds persisted until about 7.  At times we were only making speeds of about 1 knot, but with the sun up and the wind behind us, I put out the whisker pole and boosted the speed nicely going wing on wing.  I’m confident that the whisker pole will turn out to be a good addition to the boat.

I always enjoy the scenery in the Waubuno Channel.  A lot of nice looking cottages on some of the rocks, but seldom does there seem to be anyone there.  I guess to afford these million dollar rocks you have to spend all your time at work.  Oh well, Magnus I enjoyed having the place to ourselves.

Magnus, having had a stressful night watching one of us sleep at a time unsure what we doing, finally decided after the sun was up that it was time for some rest of his own.

We sailed into Kilcoursie Bay and attempted to set our anchor under sail.  With the jib furled and a couple reefs in the main we dropped the anchor.  Back winding the main to back up was a bit of a challenge but it mostly worked.  I think the anchor was probably set, but we were a little closer to the shallow shelf than we wanted to be so we pulled it up and used the engine to spin a quick circle and drop the anchor again.   I think with a couple more tries we can get the anchoring under sail part figured out, and reduce our engine use a bit more.

Definitely worth the trip.