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!
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