It was a lovely sunny day, the wind was highly variable, oscillating between just to port and starboard of “right on the nose” from the Nor’west, as always seems the case when heading up through the shoals just outside the Thirty Thousand Islands of Georgian Bay.
Christy and I were in my Dad’s Catalina 22 sloop, a great boat for those waters: “The thing I love about the Catalina,”she noted wryly, after we were safely ensconced for the night, “is that you know you are in danger of hitting something when you can step dry off the bow,” which she had done just hours earlier. It is true. [ed: the photographic proof this can be done can be seen above] In the clear waters there, in that boat, if you can’t see it, you can’t hit it. We have come to rely on this feature when cruising, one that strangely remains unpublished in the manufacturer’s sales brochures. Continue reading “Master, Commander, and Mate”