CAMELOT ISLAND

We had a comfortable, quiet night in Gananoque and left our friend’s dock under foggy skies. Backtracking a bit to Beaurivage Island, we found a crowded anchorage and completely full docks at the National Park. We “wandered” through Wanderers Channel, admiring the scenery as the sun broke through, up toward Camelot, another Nation Park island, and checked out some moorings and anchorages but ended up at one of the docks. In general, we prefer anchoring, or picking up a mooring, over docking, but staying at this dock has been okay, primarily because of the other people at the dock. You never know - sometimes it can be a houseboat full of screaming kids and dogs running all over the place, other times, like today, we met some pleasant cruising couples and have had a nice stay.

Park dock on Camelot Island

One of the advantages of being at a National Park dock is that there is complete access to the island. Most of the islands are private and do not allow you to land, but on the Park islands you can go ashore, and most have trails around the islands.

Our circumnavigation hike

The International Boarder is just a few hundred feet south of where we are docked, snaking between the islands. In theory, one is supposed to go through the complete protocol for entering and exiting foreign countries each time the border is crossed, but I find it hard to believe that everyone actually does that all the time. I may be aware of where the border is, but, to me, it’s more important to find a safe, comfortable anchorage, and if it is a couple hundred feet over the border, I am not going to stop and clear in with the US Customs and Border Patrol before I put down my anchor, especially if I will be going the few hundred feet back over to Canada in the morning. So if I end up in prison, will people come visit me?

On a Canadian island looking at a US island

After a short hike to circumnavigate the island (it’s a pretty small island) we settled down to our books, and I did a few maintenance chores for the afternoon.

All in all, it was a very relaxing day,and I would guess the next day or so will have a similar pattern. It is not far between these islands, so we don’t really do a lot of traveling each day, only 1 or 2 hours between stops. We only have a couple of specific places we want to see up here, but may find that we run out of places before we run out of time so our schedule may change…