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Day Three - Port Austin to Presque Isle MI (Monday, August 4)
Got Juan up at 7:00 AM, we drop the lines off the dock at 8:06 AM.  It's still overcast, but the rain has stopped.  We talked to Mario, who was berthed in the slip across from us.  He and his family were going to go to Harrisville today too, but later in the day as he thinks it's going to rain some more.

The trip across Saginaw Bay wasn't bad, one to two foot waves. We were able to run nearly full throttle for the whole trip. This leg is the only leg we were on that took us out of sight of land.  By now we had a degree of confidence that the GPS would guide us on our predetermined course.  Then, either a little bit of Selective Availability or some other anomaly caused the GPS to act strangely. I just kept the same course by the compass and after a couple of minutes the GPS settled down and we were back on course. 
We pulled into Harrisville at 10:46 AM. It's a little breezy, but the lake was pretty flat. This leg was 48.6 miles in 2.5 hours. There's only one restaurant open in Harrisville on Monday, so that's where we had lunch.
We departed Harrisville at 12:55 PM, we're heading towards what we called the Black River waypoint (44 49.90N  083 15.00W).  From there we'll make the decision to either go to Alpena for the night (17 miles across Thunder Bay), or continue on to Presque Isle.
At 2:05 we arrive at the Black River waypoint,  Lake Huron has presented us with one to two foot seas for the last hour, and it seemed like it would be the same all the way to Presque Isle.  We idled the boat to look at the charts, it was about 35-40 miles to Presque Isle, and we had been averaging about 20 MPH.  We looked across Thunder Bay again, thought it was a little too early to quit for the day, and made the decision to go on to Presque Isle. We figured we could make the run to Presque Isle in about an hour and a half or two. 

I turned the helm over to Juan as we left the Black River waypoint.  The sea state was still one to two foot waves.  Juan was still driving the boat when the waves increased from the one to two to two to three foot seas. We cut the speed down and changed drivers. Between North Point and Thunder Bay Island the seas really picked up, and soon we're heading into six to seven foot waves. I reduce our speed to minimum steerage (five to seven miles an hour), and set the trim to extreme bow up. We're taking a lot of spray, but the waves are directly on our bow, and the wind is slightly from our starboard.  I'm getting sprayed a little, but ducking behind the windshield keeps me mostly dry except for my right arm.
Our original course was plotted to be five to ten miles off shore, and was to take us outside a series of small rocky islands near the Michigan shore.  As the sea state kept getting worse, I made the decision to change our planned and plotted course.  I wanted to get closer to shore hoping to find quieter water. We have a few anxious moments while Juan was plotting a course through the small islands and around some charted shallows, but we make it through those shallows OK.
The boat wasn't pounding hard, but the roller coaster effect of riding up and down made reading the chart, estimating a bearing, plotting and setting a course to steer, and inputting new waypoints to the GPS made me proud to have Juan as the navigator.
The waves are still six to seven feet high on our revised, closer to shore, course, and our speed is still five to seven miles per hour. We're not shipping any water, but the task of keeping the bow to the waves, and making so little headway, is making this leg of the trip very long, tedious, and tiring.
We look at the Stoneport harbor of refuge. (See link for chart) There are a few problems with going into that harbor. I would have to turn beam to the waves, and I see a lot of old pilings and dolphins. (Dolphins are a bunch of pilings lashed together with cable.)  As this harbor usually services lake freighters, there are no small boat facilities. We would have to tie up to a dock that was 928' long and a deck height of 12'.  On a calmer day, maybe, with large waves and limited maneuvering speed, going into Stoneport doesn't seem like a good idea.
Passing Stoneport, we can now see the old Presque Isle lighthouse. We are almost there.
I asked Juan to call the Presque Isle harbormaster on the cell phone and get us a slip, by now it's about 6:15 PM and we don't know how full the harbor is. Just as Juan connects to the Presque Isle harbormaster, I pull back on the throttle so Juan could hear the cell phone.  

Throttling back causes the boat to slow enough to change the trim from bow-up to about level.  What a sight as the bow leveled with the top of that six foot wave. Immediately I see the bow take the top 18" of water off of the next wave. I had enough time to look toward Juan and yell, "GREEN WATER" as the wave broke over the bow cover and washed, still a full foot of water high, over the windshield.  Once past the windshield, the water dropped directly on us.  Juan mutters into the phone "forget it" and gives me a look that asked, "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?"  Instantly I throttled up, the outboard responds, and we only took that one wave. (Which was more than enough)  I absolutely should've known better, but I am a fast learner.
I broke the tension by laughing as I switched on the bilge pump.  I was laughing because for the last four and a half hours I was doing my best to stay dry by ducking the spray of the waves as we headed into them, and I was really doing pretty well. All that effort was wasted, as now we were both thoroughly drenched. We could not get any wetter. To add insult to injury, we were only a half-hour (3-4 miles) south of the Presque Isle harbor when I did this.

On finally entering the harbor, I get a little too anxious to get away from the waves and out of all these wet clothes and I swing in too close to the opening in the breakwater.  The water is crystal clear. Below us are some very big rocks, and they're really close.  I spin the wheel, cut the throttle, and manage to miss them all. After the previous five-hour ordeal, we're happy to be inside the shelter of the breakwater.
We arrived at Presque Isle at 7:07 PM.  Five hours of pounding since we made the decision to go on  to Presque Isle instead of Alpena.  Five hours to travel only about 40 miles. I paid for the gas with wet $20 bills. There are no slips available, but being only 21', the dockhands let us tie up at the shore end of one of the docks. Odometer on the GPS reads 100 miles since Port Austin.
The weather at Presque Isle is beautiful. Probably about 80 degrees.  The lake was brutal, but you'd never know it by sitting in the harbor. We high five at finally getting docked. After settling down, Juan mentions to me that he saw a couple of sailboats aground off one of the islands we navigated around.
A little while later two boats full of guys that had limited out on salmon gave us their slip.  One of the two slips was right next to where we were tied up, so we just pulled the boat over to their vacated slip.
After we got into the "real" slip, a 34' Four Winns pulled in across the finger pier from us.  It was kind of comical at first as he tried to dock, backed out and then throttling up, he hit the dock so hard that he sent all the college kid dockhands scattering, along with a few splinters from the dock.  We didn't know it at the time, but that wasn't the last time we were going to see that boat.

Link to Day Four - Presque Isle to Cheboygan (Peaceful trip)

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