Pelee Island, ON Canada

We arrived at Scudder's Marina on Pelee Island, ON Canada.  It feels good to be back to Canada.  Unfortunately Scudder's does not have WiFi so no posts for the last 2 days. Sorry for the long pst but just catching up.

We left Put-In-Bay relatively early.  The weather forecast was for thunderstorms in the early afternoon, so we decided that we had a large enough window to make it to Pelee Island rather than across the cut to Middle Bass Island.  There had been a thunderstorm at about 3am which put out the last party that was still going on at the docks in harbour. Put-In-Bay is certainly the place to go for bachelor or bachelorette parties. There were several going on.

We ate at the restaurant that runs the mooring balls.  Great service.  Mooring includes unlimited water taxi service all day.  Just call on CH 10 and they come right away.  The Boardwalk is supposed to be the Lobster Bisque capital of somewhere.  Big chunks of lobster.  I also had the lobster Mac N' Cheese in honour of it being Lobsterfest at QCYC.

So this is the harbour at Put-In-Bay.  Boats were rafted 4 to 6 deep.  There is a mandatory rafting policy here.  If you tie up boats will be rafted up to you.

Here are the dock rules.  Note the last rule. As if.

We left Put-In-Bay, passed the last green marker and set both sails! Woo Whoo!!  We cruised at 6.8 to 7.2 kts. on a nice beam reach and quickly crossed the border. Funny there is no red line like there is on the charts.  We sailed to the north end of the island and quickly docked at Scudder's Marina.  After we tied up and put things away, the next storm cell approached.  Winds gusted up to 28-30 kts and driving rain. We even had to close the ports with the visors on them as the rain was going horizontal. The storm passed but it continued to rain the rest of the afternoon. We just lazed around not doing much.

For dinner we were directed to a restaurant on the north west corner of the island.  Street names are very logical here: North Shore Road, West Shore Road, South Shore Road and East Shore Road. We had the special pickerel dinner: Is there a limit on the amount of Lake Erie fish on should eat in a year? The fish was excellent but still in American sized portions so we took home half of it. Afterwards we walked out Cemetery Road and then out to Sheraton Point.

Monday.  Its bike tour of the island day.  We get the bikes out and start the around the island bike tour.  First stop is the Inukshuk.

Next stop is the Pelee Island Winery. This is the bike path entrance to the winery.  The path is lined with roses.

The winery has an open room for tastings, gift shop and fine dining.  Out back there is a still and a patio with several BBQ's.  We had a 3 wine tasting, 5 if we wanted to go on the tour; way better than the Kelley's Island winery. The guys working at the tastings counter were not very worldly and really only knew about the wines that they were serving from their training. One guy was opening a persecco and his buddy was joking that if not careful, he could put out someone's eye with the flying cork.  Sure enough, the cork went flying just missing the friend.  We bought 3 bottles of wine as that was the limit I can carry in my knapsack.

The winery had a deli counter so we thought that we would buy a sandwich and go sit on beach and have a picnic.  The deli only sells frozen meats.  This is so that you can BBQ your own lunch at their BBQ.  Not for us thanks.  We ordered an olive loaf and some cheese.  However, the person at the counter said that she needed to bake the bread first, 9 minutes.  It worked so we packed the cheese and bread and headed off to the south west corner of the island and had lunch on the beach.

This is looking out a Middle Island, which is the southernmost land of Canada, contrary to popular belief that Pelee Island is the southernmost.

We rode over to the South East corner of the island to look at the glacial grooves.  Unlike the site at Kelley's Island, there were no signs and/or noticeable path to get there from the road.  With the rain yesterday, most of the paths were under water.  Belinda started hearing thunder so we decided to high tail it back to the boat before it starts to rain.  As we rode along East Shore road, the skies started turning black.  We made it back to the last stretch, which had been graded this morning and apparently wetted.  As we rode the mud from the tires was flying everywhere.  We made it back to the marina just before it started to rain.  The island is way bigger than we thought!. The boat was heeled over in the slip.  The good thing was that the rain washed all the shad flies off the boat. Lake Erie storms are pretty wicked.  I can see why very few boats will tow a dinghy.  Dinghies are carried on davits or on deck.  We have been carrying our on deck. Very easy to get on and off with the electric winch.

Here are shots after the storm.

Jeff in the big chair.

Entrance markers.

Near the marina there is a pumping station, No. 5.  Apparently, Pelee Island is mostly swamp so to make it suitable for farming, there are dykes built around and the water is pumped out.  Since it rained the last 2 days, the pumps have been going non-stop.  Two big diesel engines driving high capacity pumps. Unfortunately they went all night so it was not so quiet.

We have found that people of the islands are very friendly.  Everyone has greeted us.  On Pelee Island, the drivers of the cars were waving as they are passing.  After 1 day we knew practically half of the people.  The server from the restaurant waved in recognition as she drove by, as did the Marina guy and the Hydro workers who were at the restaurant with us.

Economically, Pelee Island is not doing so well.  Many stores are closed and there are lots of houses for sale.  There seems to be many Americans here, which would explain the houses for sale.  Apart from the marina and ice cream stand, restaurant and winery we could not even spend our money here.

We left Pelee Island this morning and headed due north to Leamington.  With main alone, we made 6 kts. in 18 kts of wind.  We crossed the main shipping channel without incident and tied up in Leamington before lunch.  As we motored in to the slip, we disturbed hundreds of seagulls sitting on empty docks.  Our tax dollars mooring the seagulls. The marina was rebuilt after the tornado 2 years ago. Found the beer store, liquor store and grocery store.  Life's grand.