We spent 5 weeks traveling a total of 500 miles cruising the islands of the North Channel in Northern Lake Huron. Coastal Explorer has been our navigation system of choice for the past three years. We purchased Canadian charts for the northern Lake Huron and Georgian Bay areas. CE integrated the US and Canadian charts without a flaw. We used a Garmin 478 GPS connected to our Nexus instruments and our laptop running CE. We did all of our route management using CE and uploaded the routes to the Garmin in the cockpit. What a pleasure it was to use such effective software as CE.

Our preference is to spend our nights at anchor is wilderness coves and inlets of which there are many in the North Channel. We found CE to be an excellent tool to log notes about these special places; notes like where the rock reefs tried to jump out and bite our keel.

This past summer was cooler and windier than normal. Even so, cruising in North Channel is paradise. We departed from Cheboygan, MI at the northern tip of the lower peninsula in early July and sailed 80 miles ENE to the western end of the North Channel cruising area. We gunkholed our way east another 70 miles or so with predominately west winds during July stopping in little villages only when necessary to provision and pumpout. Hiking and exploring the wilderness was on the agenda most days. August usually brings winds out of the south and southwest so sailing back west usually works out just fine. This year was no exception.