McDonald Island (2013-08-23)

N 44° 18.674', W 076° 10.454'

Sorry for not posting for a few days.  We spent the first part of this week on Aubrey Island.  It's a beautiful island, very scenic and peaceful.  Unfortunately it's also in a bit of a cell network black hole.  I was able to get the coordinates and map updated on the blog, but didn't have enough connectivity to make a post.


Monday morning we took advantage of the marina laundry facilities to get our laundry done.  After that we dumped our trash, filled up our water tanks and spare water jugs, and headed out.

We were looking to grab a spot on the south docks of Aubrey Island, with Mermaid Island and anchoring out as our backup plans.  As we approached Aubrey Island we saw that the east dock was full.  Assuming the south dock was the same but deciding to check anyway we rounded the island.  To our surprise the south docks were empty, so we quickly moved in to the large fixed dock in the bay.  Having the whole area to ourselves we decided to turn the boat around by hand so that it was facing outwards.  The dock areas on these islands are pretty tight quarters, and with it being so shallow as well we decided it would be easier to drive out when it was time to leave, rather than trying to back out, which is tricky enough in a single screw boat that really likes to back to port.

Aubrey Island (south docks)

We enjoyed three nice and sunny days on Aubrey Island.  There are nice trails around the island, with many spots to sit and enjoy the scenery.

On Thursday morning we left Aubrey Island.  We were looking at spending the weekend on McDonald Island.  We figured we'd pass the docks on McDonald, and if they were full we'd just head in to Gananoque for the day and then check the island docks again later.  Our luck continued to hold though, and as we approached the island we saw that there were many spots available on the large docks.

MacDonald Island docks

We were happy to be tied up and secure.  The forecast for the afternoon on Thursday was for rain with possible thunderstorms.  Mother Nature didn't disappoint, and dumped a ton of water on us.  When the rain was done I had about four inches of water in the dinghy to bail out.

Here comes the rain

The plan is to spend Saturday night here (Parks Canada limits stays on the docks to a maximum of three nights) as our daughter and her fiance are going to come out to visit on Saturday and spend the night on the boat with us.  We're not sure where we'll spend Sunday night.  Monday we need to go in to Gananoque to get the outboard looked at (yeah, it's still up and down) and we'll probably do some reprovisioning while we're there.