One More Paddle
(A weekend on Georgian Bay in September)

Unfortunately, my new-found fondness does not necessarily translate into that many skills, and thus I can't very well venture out onto the Bay when the winds pick up by myself. But with someone else - particularly someone more experienced than me - that's a different story. So I thought Lee's idea that we go paddling for a weekend in September didn't suck. At all.

I didn't even think it sucked when we got to Britt well after dark in a driving rainstorm on Friday night. My tent was dry on the inside, I had my warm sleeping bag, and I was thrilled to hear the winds continue unabated throughout the night. There would be waves to play in!

There were waves to play in. Good ones. We headed north out of Byng Inlet, through the Cunningham Islands and Black Bay to Champlain Island for lunch. Along the way, a breaking wave made Lee do a partial pirouette on its crest (it looked very cool. But since I needed my hands to stay upright, no picture).

We were faced with a headwind, but it was a gorgeous day, and we kept paddling until we reached Dead Island. We didn't have a definite destination in mind, though I did want to come here - on a previous trip, I missed the chance to land and explore. I'd heard some spooky things about it, and I'm very brave when it comes to spooky - as long as it's the middle of a sunny day and I'm not by myself.

The camping on Dead Island looked great. So great that I happily abandoned all ambition to maybe go further and all superstition regarding Dead Island in favour of swimming and drinking a beer in the sun. We did circumnavigate the island twice - once on foot, the other time at sunset in the boats.

I don't know which trip around the island I liked better - on foot, we got to see all the sites (lots of great sites, but we were alone on the island) and watch the surf crash into the exposed side. In our boats at sunset, we got to paddle a patch where the waves were slightly over 2 m. Both trips were exhilerating.

Our site even came with a stack of logs, though no kindling. Fortunately, not even poison ivy patches are a deterrent to those determined to have a roaring fire on a clear, warm night with no bugs and a full moon. Flat on my back on still-warm rock beside the fire I saw a shooting star. I didn't see any other people. I didn't hear any motor boats roaring by. There was Bailey's.

I slept great! Though I was primed for paranoia (after all, it was Dead Island. On the autumnal equinox. With a full moon), my sleeping bag was just too cosy to worry about it for more than a nanosecond. I woke up once, and went for a short walk - barefoot, by moonlight. You'd say cheesy things like this too, if you'd been there, trust me.

The sun wasn't out the next morning, but it was calm and it wasn't raining. We got on the water by 10 a.m. (but it's still daylight savings time, so really, it was 9 a.m.!), and I saw that Lee was very attentive to his map and compass. So I was not attentive at all, and paddled on my merry way. It didn't occur to me that if I was going toward whatever rock caught my fancy, the fact that Lee knew where we were wasn't going to help me...

So I inattentively navigated due north when it should have been southeast. I somehow figured I was in Henvey Inlet. After a good 45 minutes of my blissful ignorance, Lee paddled up to me and pointed out that we were in fact north of the Key River - and that, almost two hours after we set out, we were now 4 km further from Britt than when we started that morning. I blame it all on Dead Island.

My virtual home...