The day dawned grey and wet, with rain showers off and on until around 1000. We had planned to relocate to one of the Parks Canada islands in the Admiralty Islands today, but seeing the weather we briefly thought about staying put for one more day.
I say briefly, because shortly after discussing it, the wind shifted to the north and picked up considerably. Brakey Bay is farely well sheltered from most directions except northerly. Winds from that direction have quite a long fetch across the river, and by the time they got to Brakey Bay today they were throwing up some pretty good sized waves in the anchorage, and we were hobby horsing like crazy.
After about half an hour of getting bounced all over the place we saddled up to leave. The clouds were starting to break up, so it looked like we were done with the rain at least. The wind made retrieving the anchor a 'challenge' though, and Dar has a pretty sore back tonight to attest to the work it took.
We finally did get the anchor up off the bottom though, and headed north, more or less into the wind, which was now coming out of the NNW. The wind kept up right until we got into the islands, but the waves reduced steadily as we progressed north and the fetch shortened up.
We first checked the large docks on the northeast of Aubrey Island, but they were already full. Next we checked on Beau Rivage Island, first the large docks on the west, and then the ones on the east. Unfortunately, both locations were also full. Our fallback plan had been to anchor behind Beau Rivage Island, but instead of heading there right away we decided to head into Gananoque. We wanted to check out the town dock, which you can use for up to three hours for free.
The wind was still pretty brisk when we entered the Gananoque Municipal Marina basin, but it was in a fairly benign direction in relation to the free dock, so we didn't have too much trouble getting in and tied up.
We secured the boat and decided to go for a walk into town. We poked about in a few of the stores and picked up a few groceries at the Metro. This looks like it will be a great replenishment location when we are around this part of the Thousand Islands.
We got back to the boat, put away our groceries and decided to eat supper there before heading out. After supper we left, and headed back the way we had come from, the channel to the north of Beau Rivage. We figured we'd take one more peek at the docks on Beau Rivage and Aubrey before heading in to the anchorage to find a place to drop the hook for the night. As we were approaching the east docks of Beau Rivage we noticed that a houseboat that had been taking up a spot on one of the large docks had left, so we carefully headed in to the spot at the dock. The water was quite shallow on the approach to the dock, with just over four feet of water at the dock. Luckily we have a three foot draft, so while we probably stirred up a bit of mud on the way in, we still had a good foot to spare...
After getting in we said hello to our new neighbours, and took a quick walk around part of the island. This is a very nice spot, and we figure we'll hang out here for at least a couple days.
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