Boating With Boogaboo: Boating to Parry Sound

Continuing on with the never ending Georgian Bay trip of 2009, we bring you, the listening audience, 'Parry Sound - The Early Years'.

After spending three days and memorable nights on Echo Bay, we departed and moved north and east to the town of Parry Sound under cloudy skies and increasing winds;

Part way down South Channel (one of the routes that takes you into Parry Sound) we chose to hang back while a long barge came towards us through a narrow passage. This is why - for the only time on the trip - you see SunAria in front of us;

Here's the barge in question. One more unusual navigational feature to be on look out for on The Bay;

Windy was the word for our time in Parry Sound. From a hair raising (I do have some left) docking when we landed in our slip, to a loud, first thing in the morning departure by another boat at the marina, it was blowing hard for two days straight. No worries, because it was sunny and pleasant;

The Maple Leaf tight up to the rock wall. The boat that was across the way from us got blown into these same rocks when they left a couple of days later;

Dinner time aboard Water Wings;

The full compliment of crew kick back aboard the Maple Leaf;

A loverly shot of the moon rising over the marina;

Looking in the opposite direction to catch the twilight evening skies. It was a windy, cool and clear night;

That's all I need - a prop to clown around on. Yes, I said it - clown ;-)

Ahh, the things I do for the amusement and entertainment of others;

Taking a walk into Parry Sound to do some shopping and looking around;

And beer and coolers and a general assortment of beverages;

Good thing we brought the carts to hold all the liquid refreshments;

Right next to 'Big Sound Marina' is one of the largest Coast Guard stations (Canadian OR American) on the Great Lakes. It was cool to watch this big one pulling into it's berth, all the while being escorted by a Coast Guard helicopter;

Looking closely at this next photo, you will notice the pointy part of Boogaboo facing out of the slip, behind and in between the two boats in the foreground. The next morning, the Mainship to the left tried to back out of it's parking spot (or so I am told, as we were still in bed when this all took place) and was pushed back (or ahead) into the previously pointed out rock wall, which is to the left in this picture.

That is when we were woken up by someone (either Sanja or Von A, or both, depending on which one was telling the story) banging on the deck of our boat attempting to warn us of impending danger. Problem was that since we were still in sleepy mode and given the fact that there's been many times that someone has pounded on our boat while one or both of us have been snoozing (or trying to), there was no sense of urgency on our part to jump out of bed to see what all the fuss was about . . .

Perhaps we all need to establish some sort of 'Real' warning, as opposed to 'Get out of bed you lazy bum' type of goofing around? That way, each of us will know how to respond if something like this were to happen again. Maybe one could add to the commotion something like 'THIS IS SERIOUS'.

Then I won't have to listen to someone going on and on (and on) about how he'll never try to help again and that he'll just watch as our boat gets destroyed and how nice it must be to have all my money and don't have to worry about these things and how I don't love my wife because I obviously don't care about her welfare and so on. And on. And on.

Anyways, by the grace of the boating gods, disaster on our part was averted and all we got out of the ordeal was an earlier morning than we had expected and a pleasant story to tell :-)