Day Eight - (Saturday, August 9)
Morning came pretty early, the sound of a boat horn a few docks away gets me up. A Coast Guard
Auxillarist is giving out CME (Courtesy
Marine Examination) stickers. (Only after a thorough vessel inspection) I quietly make
coffee with my trusty (but slow) 12-volt coffee maker.
When I'm asked by the Coast Guard Auxillarist to test my boat horn, Juan wakes up.
(Could be because I tested the horn a couple of times?) He looks really rough. Juan is not a morning person, especially this morning. Here he is contemplating a
pop-tart. I get showered, look good.
We had a little bet as to when the girls would show up. I made a guess that they would
arrive around 3:00 PM, Juan guesses 1:30 PM. They arrive at 1:27 PM. Juan's guess
was a lot closer. And Juan actually looks a lot better by the time the girls get here.
It sure was great to see Cheryl and Susan. They made the whole trip
possible by "volunteering" to drive my truck with a bouncy, empty, boat trailer
the 370+ miles from downstate to Sault Ste. Marie. Without them sacrificing their weekend,
this trip wouldn't have been possible, I can't thank them enough.
The four of us board the boat. After seven days of boating, Juan and I
had pulled away from plenty of docks without incident. Now that we had an audience,
I managed to bounce the boat off nearly every piling in the marina trying to get away from
the dock. We finally get under way and head towards the locks with our rescue crew.
Pausing again at the Small Craft Reporting Station. Juan & Susan, Susan is inspecting our logbook while we're waiting at the
Small Craft Reporting Station.
We get assigned to the MacArthur lock, the 800' lock closest to the US mainland and the
observation towers. I doubt that the folks in the stands could see us enter the lock
some 500' feet away. We're against the lock wall nearest the stands, but 25' or so
below the top of the lock wall. As we rise, I tell the crew to look sharp as we are
going to be in someone's vacation pictures when we finally rise enough to be seen. We take
pictures of the crowd in the stands, they pose (?) for us. See the guy hamming for the camera. In Cheryl's words, "Very
cool." We were the only boat in the 800' MacArthur Lock Here we are just upstream of the locks. That's a downbound salty and a pilot boat
behind Cheryl.
We head a little ways into Whitefish Bay, but the water was getting a little choppy, and
the sky a little more overcast, so we head back to the locks.
This time, rather than
stopping at the Small Craft Reporting Station, I decide to use the VHF radio to contact
lock control. (Much cooler) Following almost perfect radio protocol, I contact
Soo Lock Control and request lockage. They acknowledge me and then ask a most appropriate
question. "Small boat JAMEA, are you upbound or downbound?" In my zeal to
follow protocol, I neglected to tell the lockmaster which direction I was going.
(Not cooler after all)
We lock through (downbound) without further incident.
When we get back to the marina, it's sadly time to put the
boat back on the trailer. The last four feet of the
dock next to the boat ramp was under water. I had to take my shoes off
to get back on shore and get the truck. As much as I hated to
admit it, the boating portion of the trip is over.
We left the boat at the marina and went downtown. We looked at the
locks from the "tourist" side, walked through the Soo
interpretative center, and then had a great, all you can eat, whitefish dinner at the Lock View restaurant.
After all that we went
back to the hotel. Juan and I closed up the hotel bar (in spite of country-western
karaoke). We really didn't want the voyage to end.
