On summer weekends, plenty of Yellowknifers can’t wait to trek to a cabin in the woods or strike out on a canoe trip. But my boyfriend, Wally, and I like to spend our weekends, as well as nice weekday evenings, on Great Slave Lake. Our 32-foot Bayliner cruiser is like a camper on the water. We keep it at the Great Slave Yacht Club, which is about four kilometres from home. We just jump in and go.
Most of the time, we don’t go too far, staying in the North Arm of the lake. But once or twice a year we head to East Arm. With the red cliffs of Utsingi Point, the emerald water of Emerald Cove, and the bigger trees, the East Arm seems like another world. The trip there takes a few hours, but it’s worth it and we like sleeping on our boat. One of the year’s highlights is our annual trip with friends over the August long weekend. As a three-boat flotilla, we sometimes go to Blanchette Island, which is more social; other times, we go to Quiet Cove, which is farther but more secluded.
My eight-pound pinscher-chihuahua mix, Butters, usually joins me on these adventures. Born in Inuvik, he’s a true Northerner, but he’d make a tasty snack for one of the birds of prey or small animals such as foxes in East Arm. I worry about him, but he has a life jacket for the boat, sweaters for the cold nights, and a “fox vest”—a spiked vest for dogs that makes it hard for other animals to get a grip on them.
We all bask in the sun and enjoy the peace and quiet that is only possible where there’s no cell service. We also devour great food. We take most of it with us, but East Arm is famous for its lake trout so one dinner of the long weekend is always a fish fry. We pile into our boat and head for Utsingi Point, where the water is as deep as 300 metres. We spend the day cruising back and forth along the base of the cliff, casting lines and trolling, mostly catch and release because we’ve usually reeled in enough for our fish fry in the first 20 minutes.
A few years ago, at Blanchette Island, I decided to break out a new toy: a massive six-person floating island with a lounge side for basking in the sun, a seating side for dangling toes in the water, and a small built-in cooler. It was wider than our boat. Even with an electric pump, it was quite a feat to inflate all the compartments. After huffing and puffing for an hour in the sweltering sun—it was a scorching 36°C—Wally finished the job and launched the float, tying off one end on the beach and the other across a small channel. Finally, it was ready for me to climb my unathletic butt onto it. But mounting one of these things is no easy feat. The handles meant to help you are useless because they fold under the raft when you try to pull yourself up with them.
As I stood knee-deep on the ladder of the swim deck at the stern of our Bayliner, Wally had to swim across the channel a second time. After untying one end, he climbed aboard and paddled the inflated craft over to me by hand. Straddling one of the backrests on the seating side, he held onto our boat to stabilize the floating island for me.
I don’t know what happened next. Without thinking, I launched my body headfirst, hands at my sides, onto the adjacent seat. The sound of my wet skin dragging across the dry vinyl still haunts me. I was millimetres from going into the frigid water. By the grace of God, Wally stopped me just in time. Good thing, too. Wally was making a sound I’m sure only dogs on the neighbouring island could hear—a laughter I had never heard before. If I’d fallen into the water, I’m not sure he’d have had the strength at that point to help me out. And let’s face it, I wouldn’t have been able to do it myself.
I still have that float, but it remains stored in our shed. I haven’t taken it out again and I don’t know if I’m allowed to.
When we were leaving Blanchette Island that year, Wally asked me to tie the Zodiac to the stern of our boat and then he would hoist it onto the swim deck so we could back out of the shallow water. I had been learning how to tie secure knots, or thought I had. We’d been travelling five or 10 minutes before we noticed the dinghy wasn’t with us and we had to turn around. I could hear the propeller blades hitting bottom as we backed into the shallow water to get the Zodiac. Wally said it was OK and we didn’t do any damage, but I knew it wasn’t OK. After that, I quickly learned the right way to tie the right knot.
Despite the occasional incident, I wouldn’t change anything about our trips to East Arm—except for my horrific seasickness. Actually, my problem is motion sickness because Gravol is an absolute necessity whenever I travel in planes, trains, and automobiles. And boats, of course. Rough water isn’t the problem; it’s the slow roll when we spend the day trolling that gets me every time. Being at the helm helps keep me from losing my lunch. Usually, I play the hostess and the life of the party, but at Utsingi Point, I drive while everyone else has fun on the swim deck. Wally gets to fish and be part of the action and I’ve realized that seasickness is a small price to pay for days of adventures.
