Bayfield, August 13

We left Kincardine about 10 in the morning to head south to Bayfield. We didn’t have to be in a hurry because our trip would only be about 50 miles. In Kincardine we talked to some people who were on a trawler and going to Bayfield as well. They left about an hour before we did. We passed them at about 10:30. Trawlers tend to travel at 7-9 miles per hour max. We usually move about 21-23 miles an hour.

We had really nice water all the way to Bayfield. It was interesting to watch the Huron coastline of Ontario slide by and see just how much they have invested in wind power. We saw hundreds of windmills along the shoreline all along our route. I think that they are much farther advanced with wind energy than we are.
We arrived in Bayfield about 12:30. We were able to take our time and just cruise along. We were hoping to get into the marina near the river mouth; but it was full. We traveled upriver about a ½ mile and docked the boat. This marina had no finger piers, we sterned in to the sea wall and they had steps hanging off the seawall that you climbed to get off your boat. Because it was on a river it was very muddy.

Bayfield Marina

Our boat is just left of the houseboat.

The nice thing about it was that we had a picnic table right behind our boat and were able to set up our grill and cook dinner just steps away. We spent a pleasant afternoon people watching and reading and checking out the area.
We watched a movie before bed and planned to visit town in the morning.

We were woken up at 4:30am by construction workers using a jackhammer on the iron bridge behind our boat. Highway 21 passes right behind the marina which is in a gorge type setting. We noticed when we arrived the previous day that the bridge was undergoing renovation; but the noise wasn’t too bad. Nooo, they waited till an ungodly morning hour to ramp it up. We had breakfast and decided we wouldn’t use the am wakeup call the next day. We would depart for Sarnia a day early.

We asked about check out time and were told that we didn’t have one and could leave when we chose. So we rode our bikes into town to see what it had to offer. Bayfield is a charming, small resort type town with small shops and a couple restaurants. Dan kept the bikes from being stolen while I walked in and out of several stores. He much prefers standing on the street being the guard, to death by shopping torture. I bought a few things at a kitchen store and admired some of the many (too large for the bikes) home decorating things I saw.

We stopped at a local subway to buy lunch and headed back to the boat. We got underway about 11:30 and ate our lunch as we traveled.