Heywood Island July 6, 2016

Bugs! The story of today is bugs. Actually it started last night with mosquitoes. Fortunately for us we closed the boat up early. We actually had it closed when Peter and Mariana were here for dinner so we had none of the little buggers inside. But, boy were they outside. I have never seen or heard so many. They were all over the screens in our little 8" round windows - at least 2 dozen were on the screens, with many more flying behind them. All through the night we could hear them buzzing outside the windows. They did not leave until the first light. We would have been like the defenseless people on Naked and Afraid if they had been able to get in the boat. We were saved by the screens thank goodness.

And then this morning. Mayflies. Hundreds or thousands of them. I lost count. Instead of sitting on top of Annie with my morning coffee, I was washing them off while trying to enjoy my morning coffee. It took me 75 minutes to rid Annie of them. Check this link out: Life cycle of a May fly

If there is a good thing about it, it was that the sea gulls had a ball eating them as they washed through the drains on Annie. You should have heard the squawking coming from them. Pretty fun to watch actually.

And there were huge piles of bird poop on the top deck under the bimini. The birds must have been on deck having their fill of bugs before I started feeding them with washed over bugs.

When I kayaked over to Brillig I saw very few bugs, which struck me as strange. Marianna said she picked their bugs off by hand. But she could not possibly have done so if she had what I had.

There is another Nordic Tug anchored here, Karissa Leigh, with Mark and Sandy Holtsclaw from Holland, MI. I kayaked over to speak to Mark as he was washing his boat. He complained about the mayflies and wondered if the anchor light was drawing them. Bingo! That is the problem. Not only did I have my anchor light on, but also the Christmas lights were on. Sailboats did not have the problem because their anchor light is at the top of the mast. Peter does have a solar light on this dingy davits, and said his dingy was full of bugs, Mayflies and other assorted ones. When we spoke, he had come to the same conclusion about the lights attracting bugs.

Lights draw mayflies. In Leamington, the areas of the street under a lamp post had Mayflies inches thick. Other areas of the streets had none. Tonight no lights. We are protected enough in our anchorage that not showing a light will be OK.

Today is a lazy day. Overcast and threatening rain. So no boat maintenance. Kerry was sick this morning so no joint dinner tonight. The Princess got tea and breakfast in bed.

Mark and Sandy came over at 5:00 for a cocktail. Their boat is a 1998. It is in nice shape. In 2003 when Annie was made, lots of improvements were made to the boats, and when they dingy-ed over, Sandy told Kerry she liked some of the ones she saw on Annie. Mark is very handy, and has a list of improvements he is planning to make on Karissa Leigh, the first being teak and holly floors. They are the first Nordic Tug owners we have met while cruising. It was a wonderful experience, and we look forward to meeting more as we travel along.

Peter let us use his new dingy to tour the harbor. This place is huge and places to anchor safely are abundant. When I returned it, Marianna had just taken an apple cranberry cake out of the oven. The perfect timing resulted in me kayaking back to Annie with 1/2 of a still warm cake! Delicious.

Karissa Leigh

Tomorrow we are going to Strawberry Island. There are several anchorages there. Not sure if Peter and Marianna are moving. It's really close to where we are now. Little Current will be our destination on Friday. We plan to be in Gore bay on the 13th, That is the Orro's Anniversary. We will help them celebrate then part ways as we will be moving on west toward lake Michigan.

Don and Kerry on Haywood Island.