Georgian Bay: The Franklin Challenge

At work, Rob told me about the Franklin Challenge; a 20 km paddle around Franklin Island. It was a fundraiser for Treetops Community Forest, a piece of land that will be developed as a wilderness park.

I woke up at 5:50 am to a few texts and a missed call from Rob. I called him back to find out he was driving back from an all nighter in Toronto. I drove to his place, and then we had breakfast, secured both of our kayaks to the top of his parents’ SUV and headed off. The official start time was supposed to be 8:30 am, but we didn’t end up setting off until 8:45 am.

I’ve never seen so many paddlers at once

We spent the first few kilometres catching up to the group and watching as the storm approached.

The approaching storm

After about 3 km, the rain started coming down, but it only lasted 10 minutes

When we hit the South Western corner, we were rewarded with clear weather and cookies. We were pretty sheltered from the wind the rest of the way. Our second pit stop was at the most North Western part of the island. We got out of our kayaks to take a photo of ourselves wearing our Crofters T-shirts. But before we could do that, we got hit by another storm.

Crammed under a tent to avoid the storm

After the storm, we snapped our photo and headed off for the final 8.5 km.

Crofters team photo

We played with Rob’s Waboba© (a water bouncy ball) a little bit. But after quite a few missed throws, it got quite tiring turning around to retrieve the ball. Near the end, we took a short cut through a rock cut, around Snug Island back to Snug Harbour.

“I completed the Franklin Challenge”

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