After a quiet night in Navy bay we were excited to head out to our first stop in the Thousand Islands, Leek Island. Also known as Thawartway Island. Weather was starting to blow up from the South so we decided to take the Northern route around Howe Island. We knew we would have to motor most of the way and it was about 16.5 nautical miles.
The route was interesting, but not much fun for a sailboat since it’s too narrow to put the sails up. There is a cable ferry at one point so keep an eye out for that and don’t try to pass close to it!
As we approach Trident Marina we see this interesting parade of blow up beach toys on the right. I guess they are setup to form a protective barrier for the swimmers on the other side.
And here’s Trident Marina on the other side. I don’t believe they have any transient slips but admit we didn’t look too hard to figure this out.
As we approached Leek Island a houseboat was taking the shortcut through the shallows west of the island and we were worried they would take the last spot. However, there were a number of mooring buoys available. And the water and the bay looked beautiful!
We found out that the ends of both of our boat hooks were too wide to properly hook the chain look at the top of the mooring buoy. As you can see from our track, it took a few attempts to get it!
I was a bit nervous as the back of the boat was swinging very close to the island but we explored it later with our masks and it’s a very steep drop off. We would have had to be within 5 feet of the island to hit.
Here’s the only other two boats in the bay with us, including the houseboat that beat us there.
Leek Island is beautiful. There is a nice dock, but it’s way too shallow for anything but a dinghy. There’s our boat in the background, it felt like we were a lot closer to the island than this picture shows.
It is a park, and you need to fill out the form and pay for the night.
There isn’t much on the island, just a few trails. On the west side of the island there’s a beautiful beach. Five larger powerboats were anchored in the harbour, running their generators and blasting music. Quickly decided it’s a better place for powerboats and not sailboats. There isn’t a lot of depth, it was noisy and crowded. The beach was a little dirty with a fire pit with bits of garbage scattered around. I was glad we were moored in the quieter south side of the island.
And here is the one and only outhouse on the island. It was clean and didn’t smell too bad.
Leek Island, like many of the other islands in the Thousand Islands has a lot of history. During World War I the owners allowed the Canadian government to use it as a place for returning soldiers to recover from their injuries, it was a convalescent hospital. Not much of the original buildings exist but you will find a few interesting things there.
We really enjoyed Leek Island, it was a quiet spot with beautiful water that was perfect for swimming right off the back of the boat. We can’t wait to go back again!
Beginning of our toilet problems
This is where our toilet started to fail us. The tank was reading 1/2 full but it was getting hard to pump and noticed the holding tank was bloated. Later during one of our swims we noticed a nasty smell by the swim deck. One of the vents was leaking a bit of gross stuff. We were now without a toilet on the boat, fortunately the outhouse on the island was half decent.
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