Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Sailing Superior offers New Discoveries

I've grown up on Lake Superior and for much of my thirty six years, I've spent time on it, whether on a sailboat, powerboat or kayak.

Last week, I had the chance to explore Thunder Bay's outer harbour with four Japanese travel journalists aboard SailSuperior.com's Frodo, a beutiful 44-foot sloop rigged vessel that can deliver a fun filled Lake Superior sailing experience for up to 12 guests. The journalists were in Thunder Bay on a tour called "Four Days With the Giant" that we put together with Ontario Tourism Marketing Corporation (www.ontariotravel.net) and Ontario Parks (www.ontarioparks.com) to promote the Thunder Bay area and in particular, Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, easily one of Canada's best kept secrets as a natural wonder (a story for another day)

With catered dinner from Good News on the Lake delivered to the vessel from their Marina Park location just 100 feet or so away from the dock, we departed on a four hour tour that, even for me, delivered new and pleasant surprises.

Starting with the stop at the Thunder Bay Lighhouse, a grand white and red trimmed lighthouse perched on the edge of the breakwall protecting Thunder Bay's harbour. While the interior of this automated light has been reportedly refurbished, visitors can only walk the concrete and steel decking under and around it. It provided a great spot to take pics looking back at the city and out into the Bay and offered our Japanese guests the chance to happily photograph, not only the views, but model turned Captain Gregory Heroux, owner of Frodo and a few other great vessels operating out of Marina Park.

From here, we untied and motored into the open lake looking for wind and we soon found it, coming right at us, typically, from where we wanted to go. After tacking through the inconsistent wind, we made our way closer to our dinner time anchorage, a sheltered bay on the east side of Bee Island, the more southern of the two Welcome Islands that greet hundreds of commercial and recreational boaters annually and signaling to them that they are "almost there"

At anchor in about 20 feet of water and with no wind, we brought supper up from the galley and enjoyed local cuisine dockside, a meal experience that doesn't get much better for a sun drenched July evening in Thunder Bay. Fernande Vezeau of Good News prepared her customary best; an array of unique salads, locally raised pork short ribs, smoked fresh local Whitefish and a corucopia of irresistable desserts and fresh fruit. We enjoyed this meal against the backdrop of the world's greatest lake and a small wooded island with beaches covered in driftwood from decades of wave action.

The real treat of this one hour stop wasn;t what was served on the boat but was served on the eyes and ears from the nearby shore. The unihabited island is home to a blue heron rookery and our precence created a cachaphony of both baby and adult Herons in a song that sounded...and I kid you not... exactly like monkeys chirping in a jungle. Our new friends aboard the vessel, used to more tropical climates, were quick to point it out. It was an amazing and relaxing experience to sit, iced green tea in hand, on deck in the mid evening sun listening to these exotic sounds coming not four miles from downtown Thunder Bay's waterfront.

As the sun set and the temperature dropped, we pulled anchor and sailed, this time with the wind behind us, back to Prince Arthur's Landing, where we shared stories, grew new friendships and parted ways in the warm July twilight once dockside.

SailSuperior.com offers daily harbour tours as well as custom designed multi day tours and sailing school programs out of Thunder Bay's Prince Arthur's Landing. contact www.sailsuperior.com for more information.