Aug 17 The Pool in Baie Fine to Little Current

Aug 17

Nothing overly exciting today.   We woke up to an overcast sky and some occasional light drizzle.

Started pulling up the anchor around 9 and found the chain and anchor embedded with weeds.  The cruising guides warn this is a minor drawback to this anchorage.  Between hitting it with the washdown hose water and tugging on it with the hook pole I managed to get it all cleared off.  

We retraced much of our route from yesterday going back out Baie Fine and down Frazier Bay but then turned west to the town of Little Current instead of east towards Killarney.   

Martha taking us out Baie Fine

Passing the lighthouse on Strawberry Island 

There’s a 100 year old swing bridge entering town that is it’s landmark.  It’s the bain of boaters.  It was originally a railroad bridge but was converted to a one lane road out to Manitoba Island (the largest freshwater island in the world).    It’s woefully inadequate but it has historical and sentimental value to the community – sort of like the Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine.   It only opens on the hour and for 15 minutes maximum.  The problem is it takes 6 minutes for it to swing open and another 6 minutes for it to swing closed so that means it’s only fully open for 3 minutes. Boats line up on both sides and shoot through it when opened.  We timed our trip for the 1:00 opening and arrived a few minutes early so queued  up with another looper boat.

We settled into the municipal marina for the day as the clouds were breaking up and the sun started shining.  Quick walk to town for a bite to eat and a visit to the grocery store for some essentials.   Burned up my allotted daily data plan trying to update the blog so headed off to the local brewery.  No love there as not enough variety on tap for a flight although they did have 2 decent lagers we sampled. Now trying to use the marinas slower wifi.  One of these days I’ll get all caught up!!

Journey for Aug 17