We made it safe and sound.
I’m sitting on a covered patio right now at the Miller Marina in a super comfortable chaise lounge. They have wifi (90% signal strength), and I plug so I can recharge all of my various electronics. Fish fly’s keep landing on me as the sun sets. Life is good.
This morning we left the WYC at 7:55am and motored down to the end of the river. . . there was a really cool barrier protected channel at the end, and then we were in Lake Erie. The wind was favorable – moderate out of the west, seas were relatively calm . . . basically perfect conditions for the situation. My wrist top GPS worked awesome, gave us a bearing, and 40 miles later we were at Put-in-Bay, pulling in around 2:20. We averaged more than 6 knots, as well as we could have possibly hoped, and much earlier than we had estimated. Tomorrow will not be as easy – we’ll be going against the wind, and it will be choppier, and we have to go all 57 miles. I think we’ll average about 5 knots, so it will take 11 hours or so. We’re going to get as early a start as possible.
Upon arrival we went exploring – me wearing my Hawaiian "Friday Shirt", floppy hat, sunglasses and beard - first to the Perry Memorial, which is a 200 foot granite tower that we could see from about 25 miles away, where we watched a 15 minute video of the battle of Lake Erie. Then, I decided to rent a golf cart for $10 an hour to more easily explore the island (plus we were exhausted from the sail anyway). We explored all the nooks and crannies, including a "winery". I can tell I’ve become a California wine snob, as I sneered during the tour about their aged-less-than 1 year varietals, the fact that they add sugar to most of them after fermentation, and that they don’t use 55 gallon oak barrels. Also, the wine I had tasted like turpentine. Most of the grapes are native varieties local to the islands, so I guess you can’t expect much. I experienced a repeated thought I’ve had during this "man-time" . . . Cynthia would not enjoy this at all. Randomly, the winery was also home to the worlds largest geode, which was a cave 40 feet underground that you could actually walk around in (barely) with crystals sticking out from all angles. I’ll post this and all of the pics when I get back to Grosse Pointe and the requisite data cable.
This place it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a resort area, a bunch of shops full of overpriced trinkets staffed by teenagers. There only variance of note is a substantial number of bars. It’s apparently where Ohio goes to party on the weekends, but on this Monday, it was nearly deserted.
After returning the golf cart, my Dad did some shopping for my Mom’s birthday tomorrow in the single strip of shops on the island, and we surveyed restaurant menus to find one to our liking – my dad wanted perch and/or walleye. We found a good restaurant (the boardwalk) that had a special including both, and we each had an order.
We asked around to find a gas pump, I walked our only empty gas can to one of the docks to pay $4.98 a gallon . . . new record for me, but I was only buying 2.5 gallons so I suppose it had a silver lining.
Long trip home tomorrow, and then it’s off to the airport to pick up Cynthia. Man time is coming to an end, but I don’t mind because I miss her a ton.
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