The Kindness of Strangers

The plan today was to continue on west to Gore Bay so we could visit the Service Ontario office. Normally if we were to leave the province for longer than 7 months we would be subject to a waiting period before we could qualify for provincial health care (OHIP) again.  This would mean that travel insurance would be very expensive as the insurer wouldn't just have the option to fly on of us home and have the government take care of us.  Luckily, once every 5 years the province lets you apply for a 2-year extension so that you can return home for health care if needed.

So that was the plan but as we are learning you can't really have plans on a sailboat. The strong west winds continue and no one in the marina is budging.  But the woman on the sailboat beside us let us use her car to drive to Gore Bay and we have our exemptions.

With no need to sail west we can now take advantage of the strong west winds and head north to an anchorage.

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After a great sail where Sam and I worked on getting a decent angle to windward (jib cars all the way aft, traveler to windward, tons of backstay tension for the sailors in the crowd) we arrived at anchor in the Benjamin Islands.  The Benjamins are a very popular spot in the north channel but I'm not really sure why.  Don't get me wrong they are very pretty but with hundreds of other pretty anchorages it is hard to say that one is better than the others.  I suspect it might be because the Benjamins are pink granite whereas most of the rest of the North Channel islands are White Quartzite.

After all this talk about pretty islands you are probably expecting a great photo.  Alas, it is overcast and drizzling at the anchorage so I don't have anything.  Instead I present a picture of a sailing monkey.