What follows is a letter (almost word for word) written to a friend who had sailed with me earlier that same summer. The letter was written at "Five Finger Bay" near Parry Sound, two or three days prior to my return to Midland at the end of the summer. Midland was TALARIA's home port and therefore would have marked the end of my summer's cruising. August 28, 92 at 0925)

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August 28, 92 at 0925

Dear Doug,

You will have to excuse this paper ripped out of our old notebook with years of gin rummy scores and MAFOR codes distributed here and there on it,or, you would not have received a letter at all, for it's the only paper I have.

I am still on TALARIA, I've just eaten breakfast and brewed myself a cup of coffee. Beside me on the floor is a puddle, still left from this morning's swim/bath. It is and was raining, and so it didn't really matter if I jumped into the water or not. I would have gotten my daily wet-down either way.

[The Coastguard Radio] Wiarton just came on with a Securité message on Channel 16. "Listen to 21 or 83 Bravo for a gale warning for the waters of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay." I did, and the message is, that for at least several hours, winds of 35 knots will blow. Well, no big deal for me, the cove I am in is snug and secure and would make a perfect shelter in any storm. On that roll of charts that I have given you, you will find the bay on the section showing the whole of the Parry Sound. On the south shore of the Sound there is a place called Depot Harbour, just west of that there is a round bay with five arms or fingers radiating from it. I am anchored in the 10 ft arm. The land to the south is high, and the spit between me and the [open water of the] Sound is densely wooded with trees high enough to give me protection. When I look up at the trees on the height of land to port, it is obvious that the winds are strong; down here though, they circle and eddy and only the occasional howling in the rigging tells me that something is actually going on. It feels a little bit like the sensation I get in the winter in a blizzard when I am snowed in and cannot go anywhere, but am warm and excited about the howling snow storm outside. Needless to say, being all by myself again, I am not going anywhere. I had made the decision already before the gale warning was broadcast. There seemed little point standing at the helm in a driving rain, when I could be here, snug down below in the cabin.

Last evening, Andrea [my daughter] left. She was supposed to have taken the bus to Toronto this morning, but we happened to meet my friends from Shasha Island (my former English Professor and his Jungian analyst wife). They were on their way to Toronto and so Andrea hitched a ride with them. I am rather sad that Andrea is gone and that they have left their island. I had been looking forward to the intended visit to their Georgian Bay retreat. However, at least Andrea will have had a stimulating ride back to Toronto.

It's been a strange summer. The only summer-like days have been three or four during the last few days when Andrea was aboard. It was actually warm enough to wear shorts and a T-shirt all day. Beside the weather, there were other strange, wonderful and adventurous occurrences. By 1600 on the day you left from Killarney, my tank [well, TALARIA's] had been installed and I was, [once more] ready to go. I sailed under main and red genoa upwind as far as Snug Harbour in the Lansdown Channel, and stayed there for the night. There were some 8 or 10 sailboats there. Still, I had enough space around me to take a quick dip in the water and to wash the harbour dust and the gasoline smells off myself. After supper I went for a quick little row through the deepening dusk. I stopped for a little chat beside one boat and was later invited aboard another,the FELICITY III, for a glass of wine. It turned out that they were a bunch of Austro-Canadians with an Austrian skipper, directly from Vienna. Since we had both Austria and sailing to discuss, there was no shortage of interesting, little discoveries.

[Right now, as I am writing,] it rains and rains. Every once in a while TALARIA heels slightly as a gusting eddy catches her broadsides. Through the ports I watch the high land to port moving past, first in one direction and then in the other.

"Vich boat do you come from?" the skipper of the FELICITY III asked me. I pointed to TALARIA, and am surprised by the reaction. "Oh, ve saw you come in. You are sailing by yourself!" I acknowledged the fact. Two teenaged girls, both named Jennifer, wanted to know if I wasn't scared to go sailing by myself. "Something might happen!"

"Like what?" I asked. They're stymied. "Yes, we were thoroughly impressed by the way you handled the boat when you came into the bay," one of the matronly crew members continued. "And, you went for a swim. Not one of us dared to do that." I was pleased with the admiration, though just a touch confused as to [just what it had been that had deserved it]. As we were sitting in the cockpit, drinking our wine, out of the clear, starry sky, there was a sudden flash - bright enough to have been lightning. Surprised we looked up and discovered the remaining, glowing trail of where some celestial object had burned up on entering the atmosphere.

On the following morning, I sailed on to Little Current. I tacked my way down the Lansdowne Channel and then found a lovely breeze blowing on the open water. I not only met, but beat another vessel, the BAD ATTITUDE, who had left Snug Harbour half an hour before me. They had chosen the outside channel south of Heywood Island to the Strawberry Island Light. It feels good to beat a vessel called the BAD ATTITUDE. I sailed through the bridge at Little Current at 1300 and decided that the sailing was too good to stop now. As a result I anchored at 1700 in the big bay at Croker Island.

RIGHT NOW, as I'm writing this, the wind has definitely picked up. Even though the water is calm, TALARIA bobs and weaves at her anchor. I've put in both companion way slides to cut down the breeze in the cabin and have closed the forehatch except for a little slit. One of the oil lamps is lit to provide a bit of warmth. A driving rain falls steadily.

The next day I visited my mother [on Manitoulin Island]. I stayed for a few days, waiting for my brother Peter and his daughter to arrive. Then, with them on board, and in the company of LUNAQUA, my youngest brother, Wolf's, 18 foot pocket cruiser, we headed out to Croker, the Benjamins and Oak Bay. It was a nice family time. At night Peter, Wolf and I talked, played cards on board of TALARIA, while Melanie (12) and Patrick (15), Wolf's son enjoy their adult-free time on the sloop LUNAQUA.

A few days later, back at my mother's place Claude Belcourt, the publisher of my mother's autobiography joins me aboard TALARIA for a few days of sailing. With my mother's book now finished, we are anxious to get it published as soon as possible. He has the habit of taking on too much and then finding himself swamped with work. This sailing holidayis intended to give him some quiet time, and us a chance to sort out some of the final decisions that have to be made.

We sailed for a few hours, anchored, and then Claude takes a look through the final typescript of the autobiography which I've just fiinished editing. He is pleased, and so, of course, am I. We discuss chapter titles, section titles, and where to make breaks between them. Finally we discuss what to use for the title of the book. We sit in the cockpit and bounce various ideas off each other. "Six Red Roses" (having reference to the flowers sent to my father on his deathbed - one from each of his sons and our mother.) "Too romantic. Misleading. Having reference to only a small part of the story," is Claude's reaction. Back and forth we make suggestions, play with ideas, explore them, change them, abandon them. "The Life and Times of ..." I suggest, knowing it has been used too often. "Trite!" is Claude's reaction. But, I'm not yet ready to give up. Something about the title seems to draw me. Half an hour later I come back to it. "How about 'The Life of My Times'?" I ask. Claude considers for a moment. "How about 'The Times of my Life'?" he retorts. The title sticks. Its inclusive enough to include everything in the book: good times, bad times, the stages of her life, the historical times against which my mother's story takes place. We like the ring of the reversal of the more normal phrase. This, we decide, is what we will present to my mother for her approval. When a day later we run all the decisions past my mother, she is delighted. So, one final proofreading and the book goes to publication. If everything goes well, it should be out by Christmas.

OUTSIDE just now, as I am writing this letter, there is a lull in the weather. The rain is light, only a gentle patter on the cabin roof. It is quiet, TALARIA barely moves. The ports, slightly fogged over, show the gray outline of cedar and pine. There is just a bit of tension in the air. This, surely, cannot yet be it!

During my days sailing on the North Channel, I also, finally managed to get my Loran C going. I got usable readings. I fed it latitude and longitude of the next buoy I had to find and when the Loran C told me I was there, I found myself in the close vicinity of the buoy I was aiming for. Steadily, I'm gaining confidence in its reliability.

And so, when Andrea joins me in Killarney to sail home with me, we take the outer, open water route despite very limited visibility. Behind us the Red Rock Lighthouse fog horn groans its sad and depressed sounding signal. [But, to be honest, it was probably only a reflection of the state of my mind. The summer was just about over, and I was about to return to the world of work and reality - and, I didn't much like the feeling of that. Ahead of us - as we headed out onto Georgian Bay, there was nothing to be seen, except a curtain of fog. We needed to find Scarecrow Island and Single Rock before we could change our course to pass to seaward of Green Island and pick up the Bustard/Bad River fairway buoy. With the Loran C, I decided, this should be a piece of cake! When the display tells us we are close to Scarecrow Island, I looked up, and - naturally - there it was. A few minutes later, there was Single Rock. Wow, this is easy! No more nail biting while you wait for a landmark to show up. No more wondering how you could possibly have lost that whole, huge, Bruce Peninsula, Wingfield Basin and all. After a sail of several hours through this pea-soup fog, the Bustard Island/Bad River fairway buoy shows up, directly in front of us. This, I decided, was child's play!

Then, our VHF radio comes alive. Coastguard Station Wiarton is calling for any vessel in the Bad River area. Andrea answers the call and we agree to assist as far as is possible, the WANDERLUST, a 30 + ft powerboat, which has engine trouble. She is, apparently, anchored just outside the entrance to the Bad River and is worried they may drag their anchor onto close-by rocks. We head in toward the Bad River and soon discover the vessel. We call her on the VHS radio and discover that she has some sort of cooling breakdown and that her skipper is afraid of overheating his transmission.

We offered to tow him into the protection of the Bad River and to help him to get assistance from Bing Inlet via our VHF radio. It turned out that he can run his engine very slowly, and so, he followed us into the Bad River at 2 knots. Excited, he calls us on the radio. He's had an idea! - Perhaps, he thinks, he can hook his bilge pump into the system to provide the cooling. Five minutes time, he thought, would tell if it would work. Where might he anchor, he asked. I showed him a spot and wonder why I needed to do that. While we circled nearby to help if help is needed, WANDERLUST started to drag her toy anchor devoid of the usual chain and tied to a piece of polypropylene line. Our radio warning is answered by a "Yes we know." They miss the rocks, so no harm is done, nevertheless - I cannot help but wonder. At last the skipper returns from the bowels of his engine room. He seemed to believe to have solved his problem and set out for Key Harbour for permanent repairs.

Andrea and I were somewhat confused about what our role in all this was supposed to have been. We then continued our way into the Bad River inner bay and anchored for the night. I take Andrea up through the Devil's Door and showed her the beauty that lies beyond it. Whoever the name giver to this place has been, must have been a great ironist! The place is beautiful. The Devil's Door seems to lead to Paradise!

The next morning we once more headed out. The visibility was as poor as it had been the day before. A SW wind was blowing which just allowed us to sail our course for Pointe au Baril. Within no time at all, as we head out oto the open water, all sign of land disappeared. But then, our Loran C continued to work like a charm - until, by its reckoning we are some 1.5 miles of the fairway buoy marking the entrance to Bing Inlet. The wind shifted S, than back again to SW and then dropped off altogether to leave us rolling in 4 ft swells. We tacked once, twice, and found ourselves wallowing annoyingly. Finally we started our engine.

But suddenly our Loran C had changed its mind. The course to Point au Baril, which up until now had been 143 degrees, changes to 178. And the distance to our destination changesmagically, from 16NM to 54 NM! This seemed ridiculous - and scary. With no sight of land anywhere to be seen, I wondered how to make a safe landfall along this rocky, broken up shore line. I started to fiddle around with the Loran C, talking to it, coaxing it, swearing at it, - but it stubbornly insisted on the accuracy of its new direction and distance off. There is not a thing in sight and having been stupid enough to rely on this 'navigational assistant' to direct me where to head for next, I knew that I was in trouble. Finally, like Sir John Falstaff, I decided that "discretion [clearly was] the better part of valour." I call Coast Guard Wiarton for help. Do they, I inquired, have anyone handy who could explain to me just why the Loran C had changed its mind. After a moment the answer comes back that, yes, they did have a technician who might be able to help us. I tell the radio operator that my Loran C had, without asking my permission, had decided to switch from the automatic to the non-automatic mode, a mode from which my manual warns away any inexperienced users since it might give "unpredictable results." A moment after my explanation Wiarton comes again on the air: "Sorry, but our technician knows nothing about the non-automatic mode." Well, I am surprised that the coast guard has no one who can answer my question, but I keep my thoughts to myself, since I may still need further help.

"Are you disoriented?" Wiarton wanted to know. I told radio operator, politely, that I knew perfectly well where we were. I could see Andrea, the boat, the tender we were towing, behind us; everything seemed to be OK here - it was Pointe au Baril that seemed to have moved and was obviously lost. For all I knew, perhaps it was the world which had - somehow - magically, gotten confused and shifted its position.

There was just the slightest hint of a giggle coming across the radio.

"What is your visibility?" I was asked.

"I have no idea. There are no landmarks." Silence.

"Would you like us to get a radio fix on you?" she asked. I agree that that might be very helpful. Slowly, as instructed, I count, twice, into the microphone to twenty.

A short while later, the operator came back to tell me that I was off Bing Inlet. That seemed reasonable. "But," she continued, "your position is not indicated very accurately. It is a rather large oval."

After some coaching she finally agreed to give me a latitude/longitude position, warning me not to rely on its being very precise. I try to get her to define the factor of its inaccuracy. She seemed very reluctant to do so.

"What are we talking about?" I insisted, " Is it an inaccuracy of a mile? Two? What? It's no help to me unless I know what we are talking about." Finally she relented. "It could be anywhere from a mile to five miles," she retorts.

Wow! I'm shocked. In these coastal waters being off course by as little as a few dozen feet can get you into trouble. But one mile, five miles? We have a serious problem! I don't know how long it took me to respond to the information.

Finally, I thank her. "We will be heading in toward Byng Inlet, and we'll let you know what happens. Tanks again. TALARIA, out."

Well, having foolishly relied on the Loran C to know where I was, and not having written down our last (believed accurate) position, and having been given a radio fix that could put us five miles up or down this rock-strewn east shore, it did not make a lot of difference whether I applied any variation or deviation to our eastbound course. I set a compass course of 90 degrees, and while Andrea steered, I set about studying the chart. Realizing that our depth sounder would warn us of when to start expecting rocks and reefs, I turned it on.

60 feet. Safe water. Anything 20 or less was suspect, rocks would either reach the surface or be close enough to the surface to put us in danger. At moderate speed, seeing nothing at all, we headed for the shore. Finally, after a seeming eternity, some hazy sign of land appears. Rocky islands, scattered here and there. I take over steering and Andrea studies the chart. Two minds are better than one. Besides, some day in the future she will likely be navigating on her own.

"There's a house," she says.

"Is it a lighthouse?" I ask.

"No! It's too small for that! Likely a cottage."

She grabs the binoculars, finds a red daymark close to the house. Then, I see a white dot, moving, at incredible speed. A powerboat! That must be where the small craft route is, we agree. But, of course, between us and it there are rocks, rocks, and more rocks, all of them surrounded by white water. It is not a place to venture into. The question is, are we north or south of the entrance channel for Byng Inlet? If we knew that, it would have helped us tremendously.

Another powerboat, a large cruiser, is heading along the small-craft route, directly toward us. Then, suddenly, it turns 90 degrees toward our right. Where, I asked Andrea, are there such turns on the small-craft route?

She checked the chart and comes back with the information. "There are several." she tells me, "Some north and some south of the channel leading into Byng Inlet."

We've narrowed down our position, but we still cannot be absolutely sure.

Suddenly an idea strikes me. I get on the radio and call that big power cruiser. "To the powerboat in the Byng Inlet area ... if you see a sailboat offshore, from where you are, please answer this call. This is TALARIA." Once more I have to repeat the call before an answer comes back. I explain my problem and ask for their position.

"Just a moment, I'll get my chart." I wonder how he can navigate along the small-craft route without either knowing precisely where he is or keeping track of his position on the chart.

"Talaria, Talaria, Talaria, we're on the small-craft route. Don't try to come in here! There are rocks all over."

I am aware of that. What I need to know is HIS position.

I've sailed along the Small Craft Route many times and I think I know where he is. But, there is no room for mistakes now. I need one more piece of confirming information. Andrea, agrees with me. The place where the powerboat came out must be the Cunningham Channel.

Once more I try to get the information I need. "Are you north or south of the entrance to Byng Inlet?"

"North. We're on our way in."

"Thank you, _______ [name of vessel]. Talaria out" That was all we needed to know.

We change course and head south. Ahead of us, somewhere, there is a line of buoys, as yet invisible in the fog marking the channel we're looking for. If we can find them, we've solved our problem. A while later, a buoy appears. The marking on the buoy matches that of one shown on the chart. Yippee, we know where we are! And, having accomplished that, we enter the Byng Inlet as though I hadn't made that silly navigational error at all.

Oh, and, as I had promised Wiarton Coast Guard, I did report back to them that Bing Inlet had been found. At least it had been useful, in a general sort of way, to know that we were where we thought we were.

Now Doug, aren't you glad I didn't put you through that!

BUT, BACK TO MY PRESENT ON THAT RAINY, WINDY DAY IN FIVE FINGER BAY WHERE I AM WRITING THIS LETTER.

It's 1505, it has stopped raining and I am going to take the dinghy out for a little spin. I'll continue the letter when I come back.

1630 The gale warning has ended. There is a very light drizzle. I took the dinghy to explore all five of the fingers and discovered that all of them have cottages on them. All, except mine. The only thing that is here in 'my' bay is a little shack that looks as if some day it might grow up to beccome a cottage. In Depot Harbour there is a commercial fish farm. As for the rest of Depot Harbour, all one can see are some abandoned buildings and slowly decaying big ship docks. After a wonderful summer, I am about to return to the real world, a world that includes school, students, financial institutions that want money, . . . and, probably, several other not-yet-anticipated surprises. Life is like that! Even, occasionally, if one makes mistakes like me, here, in the the loveliness of Georgian Bay and the North Channel. . . .

NOW DOUG, THIS IS IT. Say 'hi' to Betsy, give her a hug and a kiss for me. . . . I'm glad she was OK with your coming here, since I have so much enjoyed your company. Love to you both!

George

Shortly after I get home, I receive a letter from Doug.

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September 11, 1992, [. . . ,] KY

Hi George,

I always love your letters, even if they are written on matchbook covers. Knowing that you wrote the last one on TALARIA with the wind howling made me a bit homesick, for I wished I were there to share it with you. I was surprised that you were still aboard on August 28, and when I pulled the letter out of the mailbox I assumed it was a response to mine. When I opened it and saw the MAFOR codes and rummy scores, it brought back a flood of wonderful memories which by now, seem only an idyllic dream. Despite your navigation problems, I would not have missed it for the world, for I am sure you will admit that the worst nightmare aboard ship is still preferable to the average day on land - at least that's how I feel.

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