Five Days in the Turnbull Islands

I rowed out of the marina at Blind River, Ontario, and raised the sail just offComb Point. It had been a ten-hour drive from Wisconsin, followed by the usual scramble to launch and load the boat.

- TOM PAMPERIN

By the time I shoved off from the dock, the sun was already low on the horizon. A halfhearted evening breeze seemed likely to fade even further before too long, inspiring little confidence for a quick passage to the Turnbull Islands ten miles east. And the truth is, I was done in. I just wanted to cleat the mainsheet, hand off the steering duties to my line-and-bungee autopilot, and slump into a stupor while the boat sailed itself to a tiny pine-sheltered beach I had in mind, hidden away on an unnamed island at the heart of the Turnbulls.

When I’d realized I might be able to manage a short sailing trip in mid-summer, with five days clear on my calendar, I had thought immediately of the North Channel’s Turnbull Islands—dozens of undeveloped islands just off the Canadian mainland, only half a day’s sail from the nearest ramp at Blind River. But now I waffled. I wavered. I dithered. There wasn’t much of a breeze, but what there was would put me on a broad reach for the Turnbulls—almost a run. There was enough wind to keep me moving downwind steadily, if not quickly, in these conditions.

But I’d be lucky to reach the Turnbulls before full dark, even if the wind held. And just two miles west of Comb Point, I knew, was a broad sandy beach tucked in behind Patrick Point, at the eastern edge of the Mississagi River delta. I had camped there before and knew what I’d find: solitude, a sheltered harbor, and easy tenting on flat sand at the foot of a pine-topped granite cliff. But that was two miles to windward, in light airs growing lighter.