Last night we had dinner with wonderful clients who bought their cottage last year – after 4 years of searching with Catharine’s help.
They report this beautiful, beautiful property and cottage is enhancing their lives even more than they imagined it could. And, perhaps not surprisingly they took a long time to choose outdoor furniture. Looks like they got it right again.
UPDATE: Sept 2012 Now SOLD
It may not be the price it would have been in 1939, but it beats anything else on Lake Muskoka.
If you check MLS listings today, cottage property listings with 200 feet of frontage on Lake Muskoka are listed from $499,900 to $2.3 million. In general 200 feet helps give you improved privacy over a much more common 100 foot waterfront lot – or less.
We have a great listing on Lake Muskoka which offers 200 feet of frontage, has sparkling water over rock which sweeps into the lake. The lot is level with a great view, is close to Gravenhurst, 90 minutes from Toronto, has a cottage with two bunkies, AND that cottage is an original Eaton’s Catalogue cottage. It is also priced at the lowest price of ALL the 200′ waterfront properties.
The detailed listing information shows not only the cottage – inside and out, but the beautiful level property and the views.
We are very excited, and justly proud to be able to offer such a rare Muskoka property.
There is no question that the majority of people we take to see Muskoka properties spend 80% of the time inspecting inside the buildings and 20% on the property. This doesn’t seem right. Although lots of us do it this way, we should spend most of the time wandering the property.
Ahhh, but so many properties are not really wanderable; they have nicely built decks and stairs, to take us from the cottage to the waterfront to the boathouse because they are often steep. The perfect cottage properties were developed many decades ago.
On this property the superb architecture of the cottage and boathouse, although beautiful, are secondary to the level point, cooling in Lake Muskoka, comprised of almost 900 feet of waterfront.
Once you have satisfied yourself that the property itself is incomparable, then it’s always nice to have buildings like these.
Additional details are here.
Sunday was forecast to be a beautiful day: 18 degrees, sunny and steady winds. And, we had the boat fully ready to go. So, after some preparation – we had to tie the mast hoops to the sail and tie one reef in the sail – Catharine and I, and our son Chris and his dog Kirby were going to take the catboat on its first sail in Muskoka. We headed out into Lake Muskoka and tacked through between Pine and Birch Islands.
You can see the mast hoops in the picture below.
For those who aren’t sailors reefing is a way to shorten the sail somewhat so as to not be overpowered by winds. You’ll see the reefing points tied onto the boom in the picture of Chris below.
We brought a sailboat in need of restoration, back with us from Maine some 5 years ago. Today she was officially launched in Lake Muskoka at the Muskoka Wharf. Previously, and still currently named Dartry, she will be re-named Swell for the 2012 sailing season.
We first discovered these wonderful boats while living in Massachusetts. Known as a catboat in New England, these were the working boats in the 1800’s. Typically using one large gaff-rigged sail, these wide beamed boats – ours is 18 ft. long and almost 9 ft. wide – had lots of room for the work at hand. They were used to unload cargo from much larger sailing vessels, to get good to and from shore. Catboats were also the fishing boats of the time, used for swordfishing, lobster traps, scallops, etc.
As you can see, the mast has not been raised yet so we planned to motor – there is a 4-stroke outboard built into a motor well – from Gravenhurst to Indianhead marina on Lake Muskoka.
Our timing was great and Cath caught a picture of the Segwun just as we both approached the Narrows from opposite directions. We exchanged greetings: two toots from the wonderful steam whistle on the Segwun and two dings from our bronze bell.
Although the weather was mostly overcast, our trip up Lake Muskoka was beautiful. Both the air and the lake were warm and the sun was beginning to dip below the cloud in places.
After five years of on-again, off-again restoration, this was truly a joyful trip. I did not know for sure if there would be leaks somewhere, so I was happy that I had given work on the bilge pump a high priority on the worklist; we made it with a dry bilge.
I just completed uploading the Muskoka Watershed Council, July 21 lectures to YouTube.
If you missed the lectures in July, this is a great opportunity to learn the latest on two invasive species; the Rusty Crayfish and the Spiny Water Flea. Both, threatening bio-diversity here in Muskoka.
