Over the last 10 days Jen and I have been circumnavigating Georgian Bay. Parry Sound, Sans Souci, Collingwood and Wiarton have been our stops. The weather so far has been calm and made for a few easy 100 km days in the 19 foot Aluminum Stanley.
Today was predicted to have 15 knot north winds gusting to 25. We knew it would be a challenge but headed out of Wiarton Harbour at 10am and headed north. The wind was quite strong and as we poked out past Cape Croker it was clear that our plan to get to Tobermory was not looking good. While we were well prepared with safety gear and our boat was solid, it just wasn't going to be fun heading straight into the wind and slamming into waves for several hours. And despite the nice sun, it was cold!
We turned around and had a very fun time running downwind with the waves. So much easier and we soon found shelter anchored at Griffith Island. We looked at our options and decided to head back to Wiarton. Since that was going to be a broad reach with the gusty north wind behind us, 10 km from the harbour I chose to rig my foil board and wing that I’d brought along for that very purpose.
Jen got some great photos. Since it was my goofy foot side and the swells were uneven, I had a really hard time getting long runs. I did turn a 4 or 5 times and headed back out and tried a few jibes. I was getting pretty tired and only had my 3/2 wetsuit - a mistake given the cold north wind.
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| Heading down through Colpoy’s Bay |
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| Arriving at the Wiarton Marina |
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| Our boat path and turn around after getting exposed at Cape Croker to the due north wind |
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| My foiling path |
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| One nice kilometre long foil with many other attempts. 10km total |
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| Wiarton Willie statue - the Canadian groundhog weather prognosticator |
PS, the next two days had much easier winds and we made it 210 km from Wiarton to Killarney and then 90 km from Killarney to the Launch Pad in two more incredible days of boating.
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