MONDAY JULY 18TH, 2011

This morning Ross and I walked up to the Anchor Inn in Little Current and sat in on the Cruiser’s Net broadcast. Roy Eaton is a retired gentleman who each morning at 9:00 hosts a radio broadcast on VHF channel 71. He reads the marine forecast for various areas and then gives a bit of world news.

He then asks boaters in specific areas to radio in their boat name, location, and if they are headed someplace.

He and his group keep track of everyone who radios in. He also relays messages from one boat to another who are out of radio range of one another. In the event of an emergency, Roy can track down boaters fairly quickly as he has a good idea as to where to start searching.

At the spring Rendezvous we listened to his talk about the North Channel, which is where we have been traveling. It is fun to meet him and listen in on one of the broadcast. We now have a true appreciation for what he does each morning. How he can filter out the boat name from some transmissions is amazing. Many folks have horrible radios and the static and feedback is painful to listen to.

After the broadcast we headed out toward the Benjamin Islands. Our little trio is going separate ways today. GULLWING headed to Gore Bay and RUNNING ERINS is unfortunately waiting to be pulled to learn the extent of the prop damage. But I have a strong feeling we will all cross paths again.

It was only 18 miles to the Benjamins, and a lovely anchorage.


Many boats are anchored in here and there’s lots of swimming and jumping off the rocks going on.



It’s a popular vacation spot. We could see many people hiking the rocks.


We did have a thundershower roll through and got a good drenching, but it cooled off and we had a pleasant evening. And no bugs!