pioneering a "new" route

[Steve Rust]

About 15 years ago my wife and I were sailing in Georgian Bay on Lake Huron with our 22ft swing keel cruiser. We were on our way to Beaverstone Bay, a reef and island strewn wonderland with some of the best gunkholing anywhere. The entrance from the Lake consisted of two bouys, two sets of range makers, 5 course corrections between 45 and 90 degress skirting reefs on either side and a few dozen islands of various size thrown into the mix. We had been there several times over the past years so I was a little casual and just had the large scale chart out. The wind was perfect for an entrance under sail which was lucky as the engine was dead. A common occurance when cruising with that old Merc outboard. We were about halfway in when I missed a 45 degree turn and went sailing down what I thought was the entrance channel. About 50 yards later I noticed my mistake and found that I was in a narrow channel with limited soundings. We were running downwind so there was no chioce but to go on . We dropped the jib and ghosted thru the channel with Jackie on the bow and finally entered the bay and got back on track.
Later when at anchor we dug out the small scale entrance chart and found we had managed to slip thru the only other possible entrance into Beaverstone Bay. Several years later I believe the entrance was changed to this route we had inadvertantly pioneered.