Boaters on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay are looking forward to a totally different situation this season, as water levels see resurgence.

A thick fog drifted along the Georgian Bay shoreline on Tuesday morning, which kept most sailors in Collingwood Harbour tied up at the dock. Al Woolnough says it will be clear sailing for boaters this summer because water levels are up substantially. 

“The charts are based on what we call datum, so when you look at the chart it says two meters of water, there is two meters of water,” says Woolbough. “When its deeper you are not so concerned about shallow areas and now people are cruising into areas where they couldn't two years ago.”

According to the Canadian Hydrographic Service, the water level in Lake Huron and Georgian Bay was 46 centimetres higher in April compared to one year ago and the average water level for the month was the highest since 1998.

Lake Huron and Georgian Bay were at their lowest levels ever during the winter of 2013, forcing many marinas and harbours around the lakes to spend millions of dollars for dredging. Now docks that were unusable at the Sturgeon Point Marina are floating boats once again and Edward Holley has to adjust every dock he services.

“We have to raise it back up to where it used to be, so a lot of marinas are doing exactly what we are doing. They have to move their docks up, they have to move their hoists higher to accommodate and remember what it was like with higher water levels and re-work their businesses to accommodate,” he says.

The lake level is more than a full meter higher than when it was at its record low, but Woolnough does not expect the high water to last in the long term. He says two extreme winters back to back helped boost water levels. 

“I still think the trend of the water is down,” he says. “Every day on the news you see extreme weather events, floods in Texas, droughts in California and there are all sorts of weird events going on. I think we have dramatically affected the climate.”

In the meantime, the outlook for the summer is that water levels will continue to be above average on the bay, even if the weather is dryer than normal.