On the rugged western edge of cottage country, Go Home Lake Marina is the lifeline for one of Muskoka’s wildest lakes. Go Home Lake — created in the 1950s by two dams, named for the bay where loggers once sent timber down the Musquash River before steamers carried it off to the Great Lakes — is rockier and more remote than its famous neighbours, and most of its roughly 430 cottages are water-access only. For those cottagers, this marina is everything.
It’s one of two marinas serving the lake (the other being Minor’s Bay), but it’s the only one with a general store and refuelling facilities — a genuine general store on the water, stocking the groceries, supplies and odds and ends that keep cottage life running when the nearest town is a boat ride away. The marina offers dockage, parking and boat launching, plus a gas station on the lake itself.
The operation is a full-service marine shop: professional mechanics maintain and repair boats, Jet Skis, snowmobiles and ATVs, and the marina buys, fixes and sells used machines. There’s even a mobile washroom for boaters. Open daily through the season, it’s the kind of unpretentious, do-everything country marina that the lake’s famously friendly cottage community relies on — and a window into a quieter, wilder corner of the region most visitors never see.