Vacation Week - July 9 - 17th

I have only booked one week off for the boat this season, using one week to go to Quebec with Will for track Nationals and then a bunch of days to make 3 and 4 day weekends.

So for Saturday through Monday Nat, Will and I relaxed at the boat. Monday afternoon we had to head home to get Will ready for his trip to Rimouski Quebec for a 4 day 6 stage road race. This involved a 3:00am start on Tuesday to get him to the team pick-up point in Toronto for 6:00am……
Then back home, pick up Nat and back up to the boat. We cast off around noon and headed down river to Mac Ray Harbor on Lake St Clair. We headed down to Harsens Island and then took what is known as the North Channel west through to the north part of Lake St Clair. There is a lot to look at as you travel by the homes, cottages and boats. The North Channel has a twisty buoyed channel out into the lake which gets progressively shallower as you follow it. By the time we were out of the channel completely we were in 6 ft of water – more than a little worrying when we are not used to it. I had a way point in the GPS for the entrance to Mac Ray so we set off in that direction, slowly at first and then the depth increased to about 12 ft so we went up to cruising speed. As we neared the harbour we were having trouble identifying the entrance channel. We could see the well buoyed channel to Belle Maer Harbor which is right next to Mac Ray. We finally saw the much smaller buoys marking the Mac Ray channel it and altered course towards it. But it was extremely shallow here – showing less than 4 ft of water and we need over 3 ft just to not touch bottom. We crept along until we got into the channel – which was a whole 4 – 5 ft deep – but at least it was a channel. Damn – that was a bit stressful to say the least. But we got secured in our slip – 111 Evergreen – very close to the pool and restaurant. Nat – Or Sea Ray Girl as I started calling her since she is getting good at this boating thing with just the 2 of us – steering, navigating and mooring up, helmed us all through the North Channel and then took on the navigating with the flip charts to keep track with the GPS – and remained calm when I was stressing about the bath-tub shallow water depth……..

A couple of maps to show the route.

En Route down the St Clair River.

We did have a great relaxing time together – just the two of us for a change. The pool at Mac Ray was warm and quite empty – it is a large Olympic size pool. We enjoyed the restaurant on site – called Mac and Rays. We highly recommend it – excellent food and reasonable prices. We had 2 very good meals there. We walked around the marina in the evenings – there are a lot of boats there and without exaggeration 70% are Sea Rays and a lot of big ones – 46, 48. 52, 63ft. Wow.

Sea Ray Girl

Transiant slip at Mac Ray. You can just see Emma pearing out the back.

This sign says it all - this is Sea Ray Country!

Cheers from Mac & Ray's


Thursday morning we cast off at 7:50 AM. I had asked about the depth and entrance/ exit channel and been advised to follow the Mac Ray channel out until the last Belle Mar buoy was abeam and then alter course for the North Channel mark. We did that and the depth was less heart stopping. Once in the North Channel it was flat calm and just a stunning morning – clear and cool. Even on the St Clair River it was calm until we got to about Stag Island. It was like we were the first boat down the river. The trip tool 2 hrs- 20 mins – pretty good time to get some where quite different.

Sea Ray girl had to get back to London for studying, class and some hospice volunteer work she is doing. I stayed at the boat to get some jobs done.


Friday I did a good cleaning of the boat. Mac Ray was very ‘buggy” and they were stuck everywhere- so a thorough wash was in order.

Saturday morning Mary and 3 of her friends came up to stay on the boat for the week-end and go to one of the Bay-Fest concerts Saturday night to see Lady Antebellum. Once I got them all aboard and walked them through the systems I headed home and left them to it.

All in all a very relaxing week off.

Mary, Tamra, Kelsey and Laura - Girls week-end on Plan B. The Lady Antebellum concert they are going to explains the hats.

July Long Week-end

Well, the July 1st / 4th long weekend has come and gone and it was a nice one. Our plans changed quite a bit as we went along. Will was away at Road Nationals and Mary was working all through the week-end. The original plan was to have our next door neighbors (Terry and Patti) up for the Friday and Saturday and overnight on the US side since they have Nexus also. But Patti put her back out and they cancelled earlier that week. Then we ask my brother Wayne and Marc to come up for the week-end. That then changed to just the Friday and then they cancelled since Marc had a migraine. So, it was just Nat and I for the Friday and Saturday. Friday was beautiful weather – hot but no humidity. We anchored out on the lake off the beach a couple of miles up from the bridge and swam, relaxed. On the way back to the marina we went into the Sarnia yacht club basin – just to be nosey. Friday evening we watched the Sarnia fireworks that they set off in Sarnia Bay. We had an excellent view from the foredeck of our boat in our slip. But a lot of boats headed out to watch from the river – an excellent display. Saturday we headed for the pool in the morning as it was getting really hot and humid. We had to head home that evening since we were going to Burlington Sunday to watch Will in the National Road Race.

After his racing we brought Will home and then the 3 of us headed back up to the boat since I had Monday and Tuesday off as vacation days. Monday was another fantastic day – sunny and hot but with a breeze and no humidity again. Early afternoon we cast off and headed down river to the St Clair Harbour Marina. It is only about 11 miles down the river. It was a relaxing trip. The marina is on the Pine River and there is a bridge that has to be opened right at the mouth of the river to allow larger boats to pass. It opens every half hour. We got there early and puttered around on the river. At just before the opening time we hailed the bridge master on channel 9. Note that this is known as the Pine River Bridge – not the River Street Bridge. The bridge master does not respond to being radioed as the River Street Bridge-master…….I know. Anyway, once we heard an upstream boat hail him correctly we figured it out. Also to note is that the traffic outbound from the Pine River has right-of-way over boats heading in from the St Clair River. The bridge-master made sure we knew that. I would assume that since we did not know the name of his bridge we may not be locals and know the rules.

The marina staff guided us to our slip on dock 4 (they monitor channel 9 also) – the bright red shirts help pick them out. This is a state run marina – part of the state parks and seems the docks are very new – nice and wide and big wells. And all for $44 a night to boot. That evening we were treated to the 4th July fireworks that they set off from a barge out by the shoal in the St Clair River. Again we had a great view from our cockpit.

Emma, the Sea Ray Puppy enjoying the good life in St. Clair

Tuesday morning, after a relaxing start we dingied up the river to the next small marina. Then it was time to start to pack things up and load the dingy back onto the davits. We had decided to pick up some fuel while on the US side. I did not want the tanks to get too low as that is just a shock to the wallet to have to fill from empty. As luck would have it, the marina has discount Tuesdays where they discount the fuel by 25 cents per gallon (4.26/gal). OK, it’s not huge but we were getting around 120 gallons so it all helps. Anyway, we left the fuel dock with the tanks at about ¾ full. By comparison at our marina it is about $6.00/gal. So we bought 117 gals for $500. That same 117 gal would have cost us $667 at our marina – that’s $167 savings on a small top-up……..

Smiling with my fuel savings we radioed the bridge-master and although it was just past the ½ hour he agreed to open the bridge if we left the fuel dock and got going. It was a great couple of days – only a few miles away but it felt like a mini vacation.

This is avery short video I shot in St Clair Harbor. Two issues:

1) The audio part of my camera has had a complete melt-down and refuses to record anything but intermitant blasts of static so I have resorted to adding music.

2) The song should be St Clair, not Kokomo but I don't think anyone has written an nice summery song about St Clair and it is only a snipit of music because of issue #1 above........