Tide Hiker Adventures: Camelot Island

Wednesday August 21, 2013
44 18.080 N
76 06.523 W

This morning our new friend "Bill" arrived promptly at 10 AM in one of his runabouts. He took us for a tour of the area, showing us nooks and crannies of the river we would not have ventured into. It is truly an amazing place. The river is so large and impressive, in many places over 200' feet deep, with lots of islands and channels. There are hundreds of picturesque big and little islands, houses perched on many of them. One hundred years ago, in the era of the "robber barons" this was the playing field for the rich and super rich. I took a million photos. We were back by Noon and fired up the engines and a few minutes later we were pulling up the anchor.

When we "set' the anchor last night it did not bunch an inch! And it held steady all night, allowing a very comfortable night's rest. This morning as we recovered the anchor we found out why it had functioned so well. Up came a 2" diameter electrical cable cradled in the arms of the anchor flukes!

After a moment for the obligatory "oh shit" we sprang into action. We had planned for the possibility of picking up a cable because a) they were on the chart and b) the locals had told us about them (but had said we were "OK") and so we had a large, fully extended boat hook on the deck. Tony grabbed the boat hook and attempted to support the cable, Deidre lowered the anchor. That seemed to work (I could not see, I was at the helm) the anchor was free, but the weight of the cable was too much and so down it went with the boat hook still attached. The boat hook was about 9' long, so only about 3" poked out of the water. Tony swam over and dived to the bottom, released the boat hook and swam back with it. We all felt "problem resolved" but one of the neighbors seemed a bit upset.

We headed west. Another sunny day, breezy like yesterday. Our target was a group of islands 20 miles away where we hoped we could find a spot at one of the "Parks Canada" facilities. I wanted Tony and Lyn to experience a barbecue "Canadian style" so had selected 4 possible islands. There was no room at first place (the facilities are quite limited), the second place a few miles further west looked like it could work. The challenge was that I had to get 49' Tide Hiker into a 49' space in shallow water and a bit of a wind. All went well, although we did hit a sailing boat a glancing blow, no big deal.

The water was very clear and looked oh so shallow. I went for a swim to "survey" the available depths. (Up to my shoulders I considered to be 5' deep). There seemed to be enough water to get out. The bow was right up against the shore and so was a great chance to clean the mustache off, so that was the next job.

We had brought some wood with us so we headed into the "National Park" and found a picnic table and fire place to cook dinner. The forest floor was nice and soft under foot because of the pine needles. We were back on the boat by dark..