I’m at the cottage now, and Bill and Tony are here with others to arrive soon; sitting on the lawn and borrowing unsecured wi-fi from the neighbor. This weekend almost didn’t happen.

Found out on Wednesday that the plumbing wasn’t winterized properly, so the toilet had cracked. ETA for a new toilet was at least a week, and I had visions of having to tell 10 people that they had to drive up to McDonalds to take a leak. I worked with my dad and uncle to get a new toilet delivered on site, and me and Cynthia drove up Thursday night to install it. Upon arrival, I noticed that it was easier to categorize what wasn’t leaking or dripping (the shower and the bathroom faucet) rather than what was (3 leaks in the crawlspace, one significant, the kitchen sink, and the bathroom water supply valve. I left the water off for the night after we brushed our teeth.

The next morning I removed the old toilet and installed the new one with a couple of trips to Home Depot thrown in for parts and tools. Then I went to work on fixing the big leak in the crawlspace without much luck. The toilet works, we’ll just have to turn the water on and off as we need it. The weekend is saved.

We went out to lunch in Grand Haven and then stopped at Meijer to get food for the weekend. Everyone took a quick nap, now I should probably get the BBQ going.

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I uploaded our sailing pictures (click the image above), plus a GPX file you can drop into Google Earth.

We set out from Put-in-Bay at about 7:30am. The wind was 15-20 mph out of the North-northwest, so we set the 120% jib (instead of the 155% we’d used coming down) and put the first reef in the main. We motored out of the bay and took a couple of short tacks – the GPS proscribed bearing was almost directly into the wind, and it looked like it was going to be a long slog . It had been blowing all night, jerking the boat around even at the dock . . . my Dad said he would stress out every time he woke up and heard the wind howling.

The waves on the lake were big and we were getting hammered, but soon wind shifted and we were able to take a long beat right on course. About 2/3 of the way across, we ran into some weather that looked a bit menacing. We literally battened down the hatches and prepared for the worst, but we ended up slipping past most of it and only had to deal with about 10 minutes of rain. Unsurprisingly, the wind shifted after the rain passed (you can see this on the track) and this knocked us off course enough that even when it subsided more tacking was required. It seemed to take forever as we worked ourselves over to the mouth of the river, and it was a big relief when we finally made it at about 4pm. The tacking had probably cost us about 2 hours.

We decided to take Amherstburg channel back in hopes that the current would be weaker, and were able to reach for a while the beginning. This was probably my favorite part of the whole trip, silently sailing up the flat river, with cars driving by just a few yards away. We were only doing about 4 knots against the current, and so decided to try something we’d never done before: motor-sailing. We dropped the Jib and started the engine . . . I think keeping the main up only added a knot or so, but it saved us some gas and at least an hour on the water. We were doing 5-6 knots consistently as we made our way back upriver. We stuck to the Canadian side on the way back . . . . motoring for 5 hours, On the way, I made some bean dip on the stove while underway (its viscosity an asset in the slightly rolling boat) and we saw a boat coming from a race with a bent mast . . . glad it wasn’t us. We pulled into Neff Park at about 9pm, exhausted. Total trip length was 119 nautical miles (137 statute miles).

We took the essentials off the boat and drove home. I took a quick shower and shaved off my man-time beard before leaving for the airport with Dave to pick up Cynthia. She was starving on west coast time, so offered her the leftover bean dip to finish. I might have also had some, and maybe a leftover slice of pizza.

Today we slept in till 11, and then I did some wash and we got the remaining gear off the boat. One of the powerboats belonging to a neighbor down the street in the harbor had sunk overnight, and we watched a salvage team recover it with come-alongs and pumps (the second boat recovery of my sabbatical . . .)

Tonight, my Dad has his Wednesday night sail race, so I think we’ll crew for him so Cynthia can experience one of those things I used to do all the time when I was a kit.

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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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We made it safe and sound to the Wayondotte Yacht Club after some minor complications. Motoring the whole way, we averaged about 7 knots (about 8 mph)) . . . great time, but we had old charts so we went to the Wayandotte Yacht Club circa 1990 and not the Wyandotte Yacht Club cicra 2008 . . . the new one is about a mile upriver from the old. This cost us two extra miles and about half an hour. Luckily, I had bought my dad a new chart for Father’s Day (among other boat supplies), and so upon consulting that the true location was revealed. don’t ask me why We weren’t using the new chart in the first place.

We cooked linguine with tomato sauce for dinner, this is the fifth day I’ve had pasta in a row. It started at the Hook and Horn on Wednesday, then there were left overs as a side with the hot dog main course on Thursday. My Mom had made homemade sauce for Friday dinner when I returned to Grosse Pointe, and then of course at Grandma and Grandpa Cera’s mostacolli and Grandma’s sauce was in order. Today, pasta was the meal of choice because we had calm water in the marina (rolling seas do not mix with scalding hot water, I’ll make a viscous cheesy bean dip under those conditions). I’m going to give myself diabetes.

The Wyandotte Yacht Club is not especially fancy despite it’s upscale sounding name (although surprisingly, they have wifi). We are the only sailboat here; this part of the river is not a prime sailing location because it’s too far to get to either Lake St. Claire or Lake Erie unless you are on some sort of multi-day adventure like us. They do have a bar though, and we had a nice chat with Donna the barkeep over regular priced $2.25 beers. I tipped her at California beer prices because we were the only people there, a slow night because of the intermittent rains. I’m reminded that it only rains here for about 10 minutes at a time . . . not the "it’s going to rain all day" standard of Sacramento winters.

As we scrambled to get all the supplies ready today, I also realized how my father and I are different, a difference that’s become accentuated over time, I was the one who suggested making a list of things we needed the night before, and I’m the one who was stressed as our departure dragged all the way to 3:45. My Dad is more of a last minute, go with the flow. make it work type person. I think I used to be that way based on his model, but Cynthia’s perfectionism has strongly influenced me, and I’ve seen the light in heavy duty planning and in having the right tools for the job. As we were unloading stuff onto the boat this afternoon, we had to call my brother to bring boat key, and then sent him again to get ice. Cynthia would have been going crazy. I was going only half crazy. I think ten years ago it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. Same with his style of fixing things. . . I’m very much of the "do it right the first time school", he’s in the "just get it done". It bothers me when all of my tools aren’t in their assigned drawers of the tool cart in my garage. Justin showed me how well that system will work. you can always find the tool you need in 5 seconds. When I bought my dad a tool cart of his own for Christmas 2 years ago, he returned it (although I think he felt a bit guilty about it). It looks like a bomb when off in his workshop . . . I’ve spent 10 minutes finding tools already here and I haven’t even really fixed anything.

I did manage to completley destroy my camera . . . I totally dissassembed it to get the lens cleaned (which I suceeded in doing), but in the course of putting it back together, I ripped one of the printed circuit cables for the memory card reader. When I powewred it on, it came up with "lens error" because seems that the lens wasn’t put beack together properly even though everthing seemed to fit. I’m not upset about it . . . I’m surprised I was able to revive it at all, and it was too old for me to pay $100 plus to have it professionally cleaned. It wasn’t usable without some sort of lens cleaning (I’d decided that pictures were defintely going to be fuzzy forever), so this was the only option. Would have been nice to get it back though. I’m using my brothers camera on this cruise, but I don’t have the right cables or reader, so the pictures will have to wait until I get back It will be a long day tomorrow . . . have to go three times as far as we went today to make it to Put-in Bay. Hoping to be there in time to go out to dinner.

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We’ve left and are heading down the river. Hope to be at Wayandotte
yacht club before dark.

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