Sunlight’s Wake

As the wakes of passing powerboats slapped SOUL CAT’s port side, she rocked gently. I was in a secluded part of Georgian Bay; the nearby island’s black and red granite outcrops had been smoothed and rounded by ice-age polishing. White pines and brush partially concealed a pair of plain, two-story cottages. These were new to me, but otherwise the low 1⁄5-mile-long island, unnamed on the charts, was much as I remembered from a 1960 camping trip with my dad, brother, and cousin. On this day, August 13, 2022, I had reached the turnaround point in a voyage from my home in Napanee, Ontario, up the Trent-Severn Waterway—a 240-mile chain of rivers, lakes, locks, and canals from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron— and back again. I was 290 miles and 11-1⁄2 days from home.

Photographs by the author

This island at the entrance to the Main Channel from Georgian Bay marked the beginning of SOUL CAT’s homeward-bound journey.

Four solely solar-powered electric boats had previously made the east-to-west journey along the Trent-Severn: in 2017 the American boat, RA, was the first, coming this way during its Great Loop adventure; in 2018 I followed in SOL CANADA; in 2021 a catamaran yacht named THE HARVEST followed the waterway from Trenton, Ontario, to Georgian Bay but then looped back to Lake Ontario via Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Now, in SOUL CAT, I had become the fourth to make the trip and I hoped to become the first to make the 580-mile round trip on the Trent-Severn under solar power.