Susan Pryke Writing and Communiciation Management

We arrived at Britt with the wind on our coattails, escaping the roiling waves of Georgian Bay with just minutes to spare before the winds hit. We had never ventured up the Magnetawan River before, but the Ports Guide said the village had fuel, supplies and transient dockage.

To grubby, wind-blown sailors, who’d been on the water for five days, a night at a dock was bliss. Safely landed, we headed for the store and bought all the things we wished we had, when we were in places we couldn’t buy them. Chocolate bars. Potato chips. National newspapers.

And then a hot shower. It was coin-operated and communal, but sheer heaven nonetheless.

Afterwards we finger-pressed our T-shirts, extracted shoes from the bottom of a starboard locker, and presented ourselves at the restaurant. It was a mom-and-pop place, with fish and chips, and hot chicken sandwiches. We ordered salad and wine and ate fresh pickerel while the wind grated the surface of the Magnetawan into shreds.

The wind blew for three days, pushing our catamaran away from the dock like a bully. The lines creaked. The boat slewed back and forth like a kite on a tether. Inside, we listened to the waves beat a mad tattoo against the hull.

Surprisingly the sun shone as strong as the winds blew. Our faces and hands turned as brown as leather as we explored the headlands and village streets. Behind the caravan park, the Roman Catholic cemetery had more plots than the village had houses. The weather-worn headstones bore mainly French names: St. Amant, Boucher, Gervais, Villancourt. These were the pioneers who worked at the lumber mills, the Canadian Pacific Railway coal docks, and the commercial fishing boats.

Beside the graves, stood vases with faded silk flowers, along with portable solar lights — the kind you would place along the footpath to your house. Perhaps in Britt it was important to keep a light on for the souls of the dead.

Along the gravel roads, ATVS kicked up plumes of dust. Poison ivy climbed out of the ditches. Ramshackle fishing cottages rubbed shoulders with timber-and-glass homes in a town without government. There was no municipal council to scrutinise construction. Britt was a ward of the province, a rare outpost called an unorganised township.

It wore the mantle of a frontier town, rough at the edges, but sporting fresh new infrastructure as if it were an afterthought: a medivac helipad, street lights. At the government wharf, the men who worked at the Gervais lighthouse came and went into the Bay in high-speed pontoon boats.

Each morning we listened to the marine weather, knowing we still had a long way to travel to make it back to our home port. We could always phone and say we could not make it. We remembered how Paul Dodington had been storm-stayed on the Mink Islands for four days, with only potatoes to eat in the end. We counted ourselves lucky. At least, we had the comforts of the mainland and a plastic credit card.

On the fourth day the forecast looked encouraging. Winds would calm by evening. We could chance an overnight anchorage at Pointe Au Baril, a day’s travel south.

To be safe , though, we decided not to venture far out into the Bay but to take the easy route: a small craft channel that hugged the shore. As we left the calm of the Magnetawan River, the Bay met us with full force, still windier than we’d hoped. Waves crashed into the twin bows. I steadied my mind for the change in course, to the lee of the lighthouse, into the hoped-for shelter of the inshore channel.

It was not to be.

About a quarter of the way along the route, we realised the placements of the buoys did not match the chart data. Far from being a calm route, it was the route from hell. Better to have been on the open water, with wind and waves, than close to shore with wind and waves and rocks! Plus no confidence in the chart we were following.

But there was no turning back. Dave manned the helm. I, in rain gear, leaned into the biting spray and watched for rocks. They loomed out of the depth like monsters. I struggled to find waypoints. Red Rock, Laird Rock, Mercier Rock. Where were they?

Then all of a sudden Mercier Rock was on our starboard side, its rocks rising to within a few feet of our centreboard. I blessed the shallow draft of our catamaran and prayed that we would make it through this minefield to the headland of Alexander Passage.

And suddenly it was there, and we slipped behind the point, the sun hot on soaked skin, the shorelines benign and comforting, the route as twisty as a paper clip, but marked with buoys that read true.

We inched our way in the turquoise waters to Hangdog Channel, deked left and lined ourselves up with the guiding lights of Pointe au Baril lighthouse. Familiar territory at last.

We anchored at Nadeau Island, our bow tied to the pine tree on shore.

Later we discovered that Georgian Bay had receded so much in the last decade of above-average temperatures that the small craft route from Britt to Pointe au Baril had been changed and a new chart produced.

We had the old one. Small comfort after the fact.

In subsequent years we visited Britt often. We enjoyed the pickerel at St. Amant’s restaurant, revelled in the coin-operated showers. But we never took the easy route back, no matter how strong the wind blew.