The ship's complement
Day One -
Bolles Harbor, Monroe MI to Port Huron MI (Saturday, August 2)
Cheryl, Juan, and Susan meet at my house around 8:00 AM. We pack the last
minute stuff like clothes and food and put them in the boat. It's a little
over an hour drive from my house to the Michigan DNR launch ramp at Bolles
Harbor. We get the boat off the trailer and launched.
We leave the Bolles Harbor Marina at 10:15 AM. (See link to map above) Bolles Harbor
is exit 11 off I-75, in the south east of the Michigan's lower peninsula. Cheryl and
Susan are taking my truck ('96 Bronco) and the empty boat trailer back to my house until
next Saturday when they're going to drive up to Sault Ste. Marie and (hopefully) retrieve
us. Sault Ste Marie is exit 384 off I-75. In Michigan, that's 373 miles of I-75, two
different peninsulas, but all in the same state.
The ship's complement
Lake Erie is about normal, about a 1' chop. I have
some elbow pads that help prevent us from banging our "funny bone" on
the gunwales when the inevitable intermittent Lake Erie 3' wave surprises
you.
The Detroit River light (42 00.05N 083 08.47W)
The trip up the Detroit River was smooth. The temperature was in the mid 80s,
the winds light at 10-13 MPH. The Magellan GPS takes us directly to
the Detroit River light, an amazing piece of equipment. We charted a course up the west side of Grosse Isle,
under the swing and free bridges, then back in the main part of the river and
under the Ambassador Bridge.
At about 1:15 PM, Juan called Susan (They lived downtown at that time) and she met us at
the St. Aubin Marina in downtown Detroit. We stopped only long enough to say
"Hi" and for Susan to give Juan a book that he forgot to pack.
Just as we pulled away from the marina, we hit a "U" shaped piece of wood that
wrapped itself perfectly around the skeg of the motor. The limbs on each side were too
short to hit the prop, just long enough to get caught. Shut down the motor, pulled the
piece off, and we were on our way in a few seconds. That mini log was the only object we hit
on the whole 400+ mile trip.
We stopped for lunch and fuel at Kean's Marina which is upstream of
Belle Isle in the Detroit River. Picked up 10 gallons of gas, the
odometer on the GPS said 47.5 miles. Now we're off through Lake St. Clair and the
St. Clair River. We got a little confused trying to find the Middle Channel, one of the things we didn't realize was that if you're relying on GPS
waypoints, you need a lot of them when navigating around islands and small
channels. Our waypoints were too far apart, so the straight line paths
tried to take us across unnavigatible water (or dry land). The trip up the Saint
Clair River was pleasant enough, we saw a wedding party being held on the
grounds of a mansion on the river, and we were slowed to a no wake speed due to
a boat race on the river for about a mile just south of the Black River.
We arrived at the Port Huron Municipal Marina, slip #3 at 6:15 PM. It's 90 degrees
and looking like it might sprinkle.
We were always the smallest boat in the marina, at every marina. (This is the Port
Huron Municipal Marina on the Black River, we're in the circle) We struck up a
conversation with the couple in the thirty some foot Egg Harbor to our starboard.
The boat had Connecticut registration so I asked them where they were going, they told me
"the Bahamas." I told them I thought they were going the wrong way.
They then told us they had started in Connecticut, came through the Welland Canal,
across Lake
Erie, and were going to go around the Michigan mitten north through Lake Huron, south on Lake Michigan, through the Chicago
ship and sanitary canal, down the Mississippi River, through the Gulf of Mexico, around
Florida, and on to the Bahamas. They were in no hurry. I
really envied them.
A beer, a cigar, overcast skies, and a noisy drawbridge (in the background) that
opened every fifteen minutes all during the night. Life doesn't get any better than
this.
We walked down stream along the Black River promenade to the Zebra Bar for a Zebra Burger.
There we got a table overlooking the
river and watched a parade of boats.
Link to Day Two - Port Huron to Port Austin