Day 7

Today was epic. We awoke on our beach, packed up and set off in no big hurry into the wind along a strange esker. The esker protruded out into the lake, forming a peninsula of sand and gravel. We pulled up on it and ran up the spine of the strange formation. A white gravel ridge poking out of a flat landscape so abruptly is eye catching indeed. The map shows it’s actually hundreds of km’s long, it dives underwater and pops back up other maps, including the one on which we are camping, within about 700 m of our planned campsite. We spent 15 minutes looking at rocks and screeing down the slopes toward shore. When we finished exploring we got back in our boats and pushed on. As soon as I rounded the point where the esker dipped under water Mackie yelled upwind to me “We’re sailing!” and gave me a huge grin and a thumbs up. Excitedly I rafted up and the bpys immediately got to work tying the boats together. We now have a routine where we always have quick access to a pre-rigged tarp. We can rig a whole sail in under a minute and a half. We sailed 4k quickly and broke for lunch. Bill prepared the hummus he’d made that morning and I ran ashore to gather some poles for makeshifts masts. We ate, paddles as a raft to adjust our angle to the wind so we could sail the next channel, pitched the sail with poles, and raced through the channel and across the lake ahead, navigating through passages and around islands without breaking stride. We brought out the GPS and it clocked us at a max speed of 8 km/h – incredibly fast in loaded canoes on open water. We had a wake and 3 huge standing waves in tow behind us, and for a few minutes a couple of us lay on our stomachs, chins resting on our stern decks, watching the horizon roll away from us in our wake. Sam and Nick actually had time get a game of chess going as we progressed at well above top paddling speed. What a spectacular day to sail 19 of 25 km and skid right up onto the shore of your campsite under wind power. As we rolled in a storm was on our heels, blowing us ahead. The rain persisted through dinner, but now all is calm. The pressure has dropped significantly, so we’re not out of the woods yet.