Wednesday, July 2, 2025, Deadbolt Island

I woke today still exhausted from our wild Canada Day celebrations. Not! I actually did wake up pretty rested. My Fitbit even gave me an 85 sleep score, just about the highest I ever get. There was no wind at all blowing. It was perfectly still. There were a bunch of mosquitos crawling all over the outside of our porthole screens. There was one inside who made a lovely cracking sound as I hit him with our electronic fly swatter. 

Environment Canada still has their high wind warning in effect for this afternoon, with winds predicted to be west 20 knots. This is the day we planned to open our dingy, but will likely postpone that if the winds act as predicted. We'll likely have enough trouble without Mother Nature trying to make a kite out of the dingy.

The red arrow shows Annie's location at Deadbolt Island

Technology is amazing and has changed so much since we started long distance cruising in 2007. Here I am, in the Canadian wilderness, connecting to the internet on Starlink and watching my Direct TV with the help of Express VPN. My techy son in law Nate should be impressed! But, just as I wrote this I looked outside and a couple on another boat were sitting outside enjoying their coffee in these great surroundings. 'Well shit", I said "That's what I should be doing!" So I did. I can't forget why I am up here. I blame it on Big Jim who starts harassing me at 7:30 if there is no blog for him to read. 

Our two neighbors pulled out at 9:00AM. I asked Kerry who was still in bed if she would like to move to a better spot. I got a pretty quick no, but when I said I would like to move, she agreed. Once we were settled, she said she liked our new position better, as it is prettier and more protected. She took a couple off of photos from Annie's top deck.

High winds and risks of big thunderstorms was the forecast. We had planned to open the dingy today, but put it off because of the forecast. By 1:00PM nothing had happened and we decided to get the dingy in the water. We did it reasonably well, but it would have been risky if it was windy.

Don with Kerry's new dingy and his little electric motor

We took a little ride once it was all set up. The dingy is nice. It doesn't have a keel though so it is pretty effected by the wind blowing it across the water. I went slow, but we cruised for 1/2 hour and only used 4% of the battery which gave me confidence we could go a long way, slowly. I set up the towing lines so tomorrow we will see how that works. We used to do it with Excalibur and had no issues. Fingers crossed. I let out 20' more chain just in case the storms do hit.

We had a good food day. Kerry made us a nice everything bagel sandwich for lunch, with cream cheese, onions, radishes, carrots and cucumbers. Delicious. For dinner we had a grilled steak and a baked potato. I spent most of the day outside in a bathing suit soaking up the suns rays. A nice shower at the end of the day felt very refreshing. At dinner time we were still waiting for the adverse weather to appear, but hoping it did not.

We chatted with the Orro's after our dinner. They were just getting ready to go to their dinner. The plan is to meet tomorrow at the Sportsman's Inn and then head to Covered Portage, one of the premier anchoring locations in the North Channel. We will pull anchor at 8:00 AM.

I sat in the pilot house and read for awhile before I went to bed. We were both in bed before 9:00 PM. 

View of Deadbolt Island from Annie's pilot house