Expense Accounting

Kerry has finished her official accounting for the trip. Here it is:

This cruise turned out to be one of the lower cost trips we have taken. If we exclude the repairs, $400 of which was a radio upgrade, we would be under $100 per day for this cruise, which is really good. All the anchoring in the North Channel really drives the cost down. Thanks to Kerry for her good work!

Vermilion, OH August 14, 2016

It seems like two different worlds. Yesterday I awoke on Annie, in Canada. Today I am at home in Cuyahoga Falls. Does it mean anything that it was sunny yesterday and raining here now?

We wanted to leave Boblo early to arrive at VYC early. But it was a very nice morning so we decided to smell the roses one last time. We had tea and coffee on the upper deck, enjoying the pleasant morning, playing "what did you like best" and finishing the last of Rosemary's cookies.

But, like this vacation, all good things end. We set sail for Vermilion at 8:10. Going down the Trenton Channel to Lake Erie is a straight shot. No way to get lost on this leg. That's Lake Erie at the center opening of the channel.

Kerry saw the darker, rougher water of Lake Erie as we got closer. She braced for the worse. So many times we have come out of this perfectly smooth channel to find huge waves hitting us in Lake Erie. This was not one of those days -yea! We were welcomed to our home waters with 1 1//2' waves on the quarter, very pleasant conditions all the way to Vermilion.

For an experiment I tried using the auto route feature on my chart plotter. With this fancy chip I bought the plotter will chart the best course for you to follow. I never use it because the one time I tried I did not like it's route. But, I decided it was time to try it again. And, I still did not like it. Check this out.

Instead of taking me straight down the deep water in the channel then turning to port it takes me right in some shallower water before finally turning to port. Who knows what it is thinking?

The trip to Vermilion took a little over 7 1/2 hours and covered 55.3 nautical miles at an average speed of 8.4. We hit 10.2 for a short period while we were benefiting from the river current. We arrived at 2:45, exactly as predicted by the GPS. Jim and Jola came out to greet us in Liberty and took this final Lake Michigan Cruise picture of Annie as we approached the entrance to Vermilion.

For the trip, we traveled 1,165 nautical miles. From the time we started home from Leland, we traveled 440 miles. We had remarkably few problems once Mark from Parker Marine helped us sort out our electrical and AIS issues at the very start of the voyage. Other than the mental pain and suffering I experienced from our water leak, no other real issues. (I can't comment anymore on this because of the pending lawsuit.) We put 153.7 hours on the engine, and 7.5 hours on the generator.

Peter and Marianna and Big Jim were there to catch our dock lines when we arrived. It was great to see them and have a welcoming committee greet us. I had to watch Big Jim as he tried to get the Princess to mutiny against me for some "alleged" blog comments I made. We just happened to have a bottle of cold champagne which we popped to celebrate a safe return. Marianna brought a still warm delicious coffee cake which we did quite a number on. Rick and Nancy Simpson joined us too and we were able to get caught up on their successful trip to the Thousand Islands. Jim and Jola and the Boaz's also stopped over to say hello. Rosemary arrived a little later to give us a ride home. We stopped at our favorite Mexican Restaurant for one last celebratory pitcher of frozen margaritas before officially calling this vacation over by walking into our home on Cedar Hill Circle.

I will likely do one more post in a couple days. Kerry tracks our expenses and I always like to go back and post them to aid in future trip planning. Thanks for following the blog. The Princess says we can do it again next year. Can't wait!

Boblo Island, ON August 13, 2016

The first thing I did in preparing this post was to make sure I am posting it to this year's blog. Check! This will be one of the final posts of this voyage. Kerry just made a martini for me as I sit down to write, so life is indeed good. For dinner we plan to enjoy a nice bottle of Cabernet that the Simpsons gave us before we left on our cruise. I had planned to grill the Italian sausage we have, but it might be cooked inside instead. We will have freshly baked bread to go with it. Yum!

It's a dark and stormy late afternoon. There is a severe thunderstorm warning that just went into effect. Actually there has been a high probability of thunderstorms since yesterday, but so far none have hit us. All of this muck is supposed to be gone in the morning. I sure hope it is as we plan to motor back to Vermilion. It would be difficult for us to leave the dock safely with the strong wind blowing as it is now.

We have had a very nice laid back day. Kerry slept in. I perked a pot of coffee and sat on the upper deck watching two fisherman having great success, and a freighter or two go by.

Once Kerry was up I shared her pot of tea as she joined me upstairs. I spent a large part of the afternoon up there too, smoking a cigar and starting a new James Patterson Alex Cross mystery novel. It was rather pretty and pleasant. The sky was heavily overcast. While the temperature was warm, it was very comfortable because of the strong breeze. In the picture below, you can see the conditions. Lake Erie is at the open end of the channel.

Shopping is good at Boblo. Actually, shopping is a ferry ride across the Livingston upbound ship channel in Amherstburg. There is a Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire and Dollar Tree stores withing two blocks of the ferry terminal. We spent a couple of hours in the middle of the day touring the stores. Kerry bought a bunch of clearance kiddy items she hopes to sell in the VYC Ship's Store.

Wow, it is really thundering and raining now. Our kayak is on our upper deck and probably filling with water. Well, it can't sink, can it?

The weather broke long enough for me to grill the sausages. They were delicious. Kerry made a tomato, onion and cucumber summer salad, and with the hot bread just out of the oven, we had a great "last supper". Thanks again to the Simpsons for their excellent wine gift.

Kerry spent a lot of time today on the computer starting to recreate her military memoirs. I am proud of her and her stick-to-it-ness. Rosemary is going to pick us up tomorrow afternoon at VYC. I offered her a thank you dinner at Rudy's, but she will take a rain check as she wants to get home early on a work day eve. I think it is a 62 mile trip home tomorrow. It will be good to be home, but a little bittersweet as our wonderful trip will be over. The good news though, Kerry is looking forward to another trip north next year. When we left on this trip, she said we were staying home next year. Maybe she just enjoys being a Princess!

Boblo Island, On August 12, 2016

It was a nice quiet morning with little breeze so I knew we would have no issue leaving. We planned to catch the first bridge at 8:00. At 7:25 I saw a sailboat going to the bridge. I knew he would be surprised. He finally called the marina and found out that the first bridge was at 8:00.

I was glad he was there because they always open the 8:00 bridge late. The tender does not start until 8:00 I guess. So as often as that sailboat called to request a 8:00 opening, he did not answer. When he finally did, at 8:05, he was like, "So what do you want?" Kerry thought I should tell him he was rude, but the picture in my mind of the bridge closing on Annie overruled the Princess.

There was a 90% chance of a thunderstorm by 2:00 according to the weather channel. The GPS said we would get there at 2:00 so I figured this could be interesting. As luck would have it, we had a 15 knot breeze on the nose. It was going against the current so we had some choppy waves. They were no problem except that they slowed us down. In Lake St. Clair we were motoring in the 8's verses the 11's in the Detroit River. Lots of water came over Annie's bow.

Oh yea, and one other problem. Apparently we did not have the front window closed tightly. Because when I went to put on my shirt at the marina it was soaked - and so were all the bed clothes. Guess which Princess was not happy. Not sure where we are sleeping tonight.

It was a fast trip today though. We arrived at 2:00, so we did 58.6 miles in 6 hours, about a 10.0 knot average. That puts us at 1106 nautical miles for the trip so far. Jim K was able to follow our progress on AIS on the web. We traveled the length of the St Clair River, Lake St Clair and the Detroit river. We can see Lake Erie from the marina at Boblo. I think it will be another 60 miles to Vermilion on Sunday. So far a good weather day is forecast. The promised storms have not arrived by 5:00. No complaints from me. Below is one of the more interesting boats we passed today.

When we arrived it was pretty breezy. No one from the marina was here to help or show us where our dock was, but some nice permanent dockers got on the radio and helped us in. The marina assigned us to a dock which was way to small and also difficult to get into. My helpers said the workers here know nothing about boats and have no clue how to assign slips. So, with their help, we backed out of that dock and took one to our liking. The marina staff did not care. Kerry called us into Canada Customs with no problem at all. Peter Orro will be glad to know they now have cleats on the docks. When we arrived here on our outbound trip they did not. Peter arrived first and was not pleased to discover this. When we arrived he was here to help us. Kerry had to wash off bird droppings when we were finally tied up.

I heard from Jims Karpinski and Schulz and Kip that my blog was not updated. Yet I did do the daily posts. It turns out that I made the last 2 days posts on last year's blog. It took me quite a while to figure out what I had done, but it's fixed now.

A few little showers came by at cocktail time. We were going to grill Italian sausages, but decided to do the Boblo Restaurant for their perch special, which was very good. Our bed is drying out so it appears we will be able to sleep in the Captain's Quarters tonight!

St Clair, MI August 11, 2026

Today started out very nice. I got Kerry up at 7:30 to go kayaking with me. She wanted to go early before it got too hot. After cookies, coffee and tea we were ready. Our kayak needed a little air so we filled it up. This was the first time I put air in it since I inflated it way back in Bayfield in June.

We had a nice kayak up and down the Pine River and through the harbor. When we returned we had some more hot tea and cereal and watched a bit of Fox News. Unfortunately is was so hot and humid that neither of us wanted to do much outside. So, it was a good day to defrost the refrigerator, which is what we did. I would have liked to have walked downtown, but just could not get motivated to do so because of the heat. Kerry was a no go for sure.

Leftover pizza was lunch. After that I read for a while and Kerry worked on her Army memoirs. She has been working on them for most of this trip, and has 17 pages in a Word document. All of a sudden, she asks me to find her document. It is gone. I could not recover it. I went on the internet for help, but nothing suggested worked. We called the two most knowledgeable people we knew for help, Doug Gromley and our son in law Nate, but they were stumped. I also called a company that had fixed this computer earlier this year. John there had good ideas to try and find a previous version, but nothing worked. We agreed I would take this PC to him when we get home next week. Who knows what happened. She remembers saying yes to a question asking if she wanted to save changes. As you can imagine, Kerry is really disappointed, bummed and has a headache. I do not blame her, and really wish there was something I could do to fix it. She is really ready to get home now, but says she is going to start the project over. She wants to do it so Anne has a history of her Army career. Unfortunately, this is putting a negative ending to our otherwise wonderful cruise.

We plan to catch the 8:00 bridge tomorrow, the earliest one. It's about 70 miles I think to Boblo Island, but I should be able to average 9-10 knots with the favorable current, so it will be quicker than most 70 mile trips, although going down a river requires constant attention and navigation.  We plan to stay 2 nights in Boblo and motor to Vermilion on Sunday. Lake Erie weather could change our plans of course. My Good Friend Rosemary has agreed to pick us up if we make it back on Sunday.

Annie in St Clair Boat Harbor Marina

Kerry asked if we were going out to dinner tonight. I said we would do whatever she wanted to do as I imagined she was in a volatile mood. At least she laughed at that.

Kerry took a big nap and woke up refreshed. She even started her military memoirs over again. I was impressed at how she bounced back. At Nate's suggestion, she is doing it in Google Docs, so there will be no chance of losing her work again.

She did not want to go out for dinner. We decided to have Jola's egg plant parmesan which Jim and I did not finish when he was here. It was excellent - thanks Jola! But before that she wanted an appetizer tray of smoked clams, crackers, nuts and cheese. She got what she wanted, plus a nice glass of jug wine.

We walked to town after dinner. It was still warm but the humidity has dropped a bit after some rain showers passed through. I treated Kerry to ice cream. Would you believe we got stopped by the 8:00 bridge? We did. In 12 hours we will be causing the traffic to stop.

St Clair, MI August 10, 2016

Today started with blueberry pancakes made by the Skipper for the Princess. Yum! We left Port Sanilac at 8:30 on our way to St Clair. As it turns out, we were very fortunate to get in. They are sold out for the weekend. Some yacht club reserved all the slips. If we had not skipped two ports and moved our arrival dates here up, we would have been closed out.

It was a straight shot from Sanilac to the Blue Water Bridge. It was 39 miles to our dock in St Clair. We made the 1:00 bridge. I had to speed up a bit to make sure we made that bridge opening.

Pine River Bridge that opens on the hour and 1/2 hour.

We motored at 8.1 knots today, but hit 12.8 knots once with the same motor speed going under the Blue Water bridge because of the strong current. I was able to spot the bridge 14 miles from it. Our next trip to Boblo island is about 70 miles, but we should be able to average 10 knots with the favorable current.

When we went under the Blue Water Bridge we completed a circle. If a string had followed in our wake, it crossed over the outgoing string yesterday at the bridge. We had traveled 1037 miles at that point. We have traveled 1049 nautical miles now that we are in St Clair. Our trip home from Leland has been 326 miles so far.

The seas were really flat today. It was a perfect day for a powerboat trip down the lake. The AIS tracked Annie as we traveled. It is amazing technology. It sure helps keep track of freighters too.

The water color was spectacular. I am not sure if this picture conveys how beautiful it was, but as the Donald says, "Trust me!"

Of course we passed a bunch of lighthouses today. This one warns of the shore on the west of the Blue Water Bridge.

While I was looking forward to getting into the St Clair River, I should not have been. The waves in the river were horrible. Speed boats kept blowing by us with huge wakes, and those wakes bounced off the metal sides of the river sides making it very rocky. 

Once we got in our dock and tied up we were very hot. You don't notice the heat on the water, but it was stifling on land. My super crew presented me with a cold Stella in the proper Stella chalice once we were inside with the air conditioners on. What a great crew!


There is no laundry at the marina, but they have a shuttle service and they took us to a downtown laundry. Kerry thought our dirty clothes were cleaner than the machines, but we washed anyway. There is a great downtown mall here, so we were able to stay very entertained while the clothes washed and dried.

You can learn something every day. The couple docked next to us demonstrated how to stay cool using a sprinkler on the dock. They took a tour of Annie as they had never seen a boat "quite like that."

It was too hot for a kayak ride today I was told, but the Princess promised we could do one tomorrow morning. I really want to see what is down the river. We had a pizza delivered to Annie for dinner. Our beautiful weather could be ending tomorrow, as there is a 50% chance of thunderstorms for the next couple of days.

Port Sanilac, MI August 9, 2016

We decided last night we would leave early today. So, I was up at 6:00 and we left at sunrise, which was 6:30.  I was bummed when I went outside and saw all the little black bugs all over Annie – too many to mop off like we usually do. Well, I figured that we could wash them off on the way with the wash down pump since the seas would be flat. Turns out that I did not need to worry about them.

There were pretty good size seas running once we left the marina break wall. That sure surprised me because they were not forecast, and the wind was very light in the marina. Eventually they grew to 3’. We had plenty of water coming over Annie as we sailed into them and all the lower level bugs were quickly washed away. Kerry saw one of her first sunrises's of the trip, and even took this picture.

I even had to close the hatch on the top of the pilot house because water was splashing up there getting the skipper wet. I am not use to getting wet. When we use to race Excalibur I had Big Jim and Rosemary sitting in the cockpit happily blocking all the spray before it hit the captain.  

We started out to go to Harbor Beach, about 50 miles away. We had already decided to pass Port Austin, one of our planned stops. There are two possible places to dock in Harbor Beach, Off Shore Marina and the City Marina. I decided to look at Active Captain on line to check out the reviews to see where we should stay. There were no reviews for the Off Shore Marina and the City Marina had poor reviews. Apparently the docks are only in fair condition, the restrooms are not clean and open to the public, and it is 1 mile from downtown. Since our next stop, Port Sanilac, was only 25 miles further. I decided we should go there.

How to convince Kerry? Easy. I asked her if she would like to do an extra 25 miles today and get home a day early. No problem – we were off to Sanilac.

The seas were up and down all the way, hitting Annie from 10-2:00 all day. Annie does well going into seas so the trip was not unpleasant. We traveled 73.5 miles. We arrived at 3:30 so it was a 9 hour trip. The wind and seas dropped for about ½ hour and I climbed outside for a brief period, but quickly they increased again and I was back in the pilot house. Kerry stayed pretty much horizontal all day, but when she was up she was treated like a princess, with tea, blanket, iPad and saltine crackers.

I got an email from my friends at Parker Marine. They were watching Annie cross Saginaw Bay on the internet via my AIS. They included the following picture. Later Jim Karpinski emailed that he saw Annie was going 8.1 knots and was very close to Port Sanilac. Annie is the pink boat going down the right side of Michigan.

The marina is nice here, and the harbor is nearly full. That's quite a change from the mostly empty marinas we have been in lately. They still charge $10 for internet access, which seems really out of touch. Thank goodness I can use Verizon. We hit the downtown area once we signed in at the marina. The most famous store in Port Sanilac is Raymond's Hardware Store which was excellent. 

We decided to have dinner on Annie, a linguine with clam sauce treat. Because we bypassed Port Austin and Harbor Beach we are two days ahead of our return schedule. Tomorrow we head to St Clair, MI, a port we really enjoy. We will stay there 2 days. From there we plan to head to Boblo Island, in Canada – the scene of my initial reporting in disaster. You can bet Kerry will be calling in this time!