7/29 From Pentwater to Frankfort

Had my fortunes changed? I left Pentwater with no known defects, and the weather was nice. Well, it was sunny, but my weather advisor Chris was unfortunately wrong - no winds worth the name happened for most of the day. As boaters know, that means the biting flies come out! The only way to escape them is to start the engine and move. And so we passed Big Sable point:

Progress was so good and the weather stayed nice (I even had a little wind for a couple hours) that I decided to press on to Frankfort instead of the planned Arcadia. Guess who I found there:

That's right - Hal from Tern

No day without technical trouble - on entering Frankfort I found that the rollerfurler didn't furl. That could have been a big problem in strong winds, but as mentioned there wasn't really wind and I just rolled the sail up by walking to the foredeck and turning the forestay.
The next morning I found the problem - three screws that hold the furler together were missing. I found one of them on deck, the others were totally gone. Easy to fix!

7/30 From Frankfort to Beaver Island

Well, before we begin, here's my technical problem of the day. And this one is entirely my fault, which makes it even more embarassing: The pressure water hoses I out into Caprice are mostly thick heavy vinyl, with a 1/ inch inner diameter and about 4 millimeter wall thickness. Mostly, but there's one hose where I didn't have any more of the thick stuff and so bought this hose from Home Depot. Big mistake - this one was much thinner, and rated 45PSI at 21 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, I have 60PSI or so in my hoses, and the environment where the hose lives is warmer than 21 degrees. It's in the engine compartment which I guess can after a few hours reach 45 degrees. And here's the result: The hose survived about 3 weeks, and then split like an old balloon:

Such a small incident can actually sink ones boat - if the pump is accidentally left on when leaving the boat, and the hose bursts when you are not there, the pump will fill the boat for you until it sinks.

Anyways, let's move on to the next destination. I wanted to get to Charlevoix. As the day before, there was almost no wind from the start and I had to use the motor. I passed by Sleeping Bear Point:

 And then though the Manitou passage, where commercial shipping has to squeeze through:

This lighthouse is at the northern end of the Manitou passage:

And now the wind started. It was almost exactly from the stern. Gennaker time! I hoisted the thing and got up a good speed. However, it kept collapsing, and wrapping around the headstay. I found that the best way to tame it was to lower the mainsail. And then I thought of trying to do the double headsail thing of the passage makers. Unlike them, I need no double headstay. The Gennaker and the jib can coexist quite well:

I was making such good progress that I changed plans and decided to press on to Beaver Island.
How fortunes change - this was just a few hours later. That squall forced me to douse the gennaker, and even to furl the jib:

Finally, I arrived at Beaver Island in the night and anchored...

Crossing the lake

Tuesday, 7/26
The day started beautifully, sunny and mild, and a little NW breeze. I got on my way early at 6:45.

I sailed right from the start, initially ENE, which unfortunately cost me dearly in time, and also forced me to gradually change course to E. My hope to make it to Whitehall was dashed cruelly!

The next attempt at crossing Lake Michigan - Racine in the background

I encountered two lakers in the center traffic lanes, by which time the wind was freshening, and waves started building more and more. For the first time ever I put a reef in the main and partially furled the genoa, which made life a lot better. Winds from the North kept increasing to maybe 20 knots.

Traffic lanes in the middle of the lake - I encountered two large lakers, but they were miles ahead of me 

I was getting queasy from the rolling and got better only after un-eating my lunch. I took a little nap, but eventually the autopilot was overwhelmed by the bigger and bigger broadside waves. I myself was sick two more times, but had to helm the last four hours.

Entering Port Sheldon (Pigeon Lake) was awful, as I had taken my sails down 1 mile out and the waves were making me roll through +-30 degrees. I was glad when I entered the lake, and in here it was gorgeously calm, if not exactly quiet on account of the nearby coal power plant.


Wed, 7/27

At Pigeon Lake (Port Sheldon)

I woke up early next morning from some bird song - where would those birds have perched if I didn't have to divert to Port Sheldon?

Good Morning Song

Before I set off on my next leg, my weather team Admiral Dana and Chris warned me that bad weather was going to hit soon and recommended sitting it out - and I'm sure glad I did. It rained buckets, and bailing the dinghy afterwards took a good effort - here I might add that I'm dragging our dinghy with me instead of transporting it on deck. The school of thought is that the dinghy on deck is safer and obviously reduces drag - but it's also in the way if you have to get on the foredeck, and reduces visibility, so that's my choice, school be damned.

After that, the flood

Finally, at 4PM, I decided to get on my way and get as far as Muskegon, to make up for lost time. The weather still didn't look nice. As soon as I exited the harbor entrance I discovered that the autopilot hadn't just been overwhelmed temporarily yesterday, but that something was clearly broken with it. It would simply not keep a steady course. Now, you can sail with a broken sail, a broken motor, even a leak. But without an autopilot it's just no fun! I was again tied to the tiller for the whole 6 hours it took to get to Muskegon. The reason why it took so long is that after passing Grand Haven the weather turned really ugly, with thunderstorms galore. I had to take shelter in the cabin twice when some of those storms caught me right in the middle, and without the autopilot I had no choice but to switch everything off and drift for the duration of the storm. I wasn't hit by lightning, but then the trip has hardly started, who knows what else will happen. Finally around 10PM I entered Muskegon lake and anchored in the NW corner. The new gas oven worked wonders to dry my drenched clothing.

Next I had to tackle the autopilot - I hoped that maybe something got wet inside, or condensation had formed in the compass (this is an ancient model with a real optical compass!). I got lucky - after opening it the fault was obvious - a bracket that holds the pushrod had worked itself loose. Reattaching should fix the thing, I thought.

My weather trouble was far from over though - this night brought more heavy rain, and eventually Caprice started leaking in multiple places. All main four windows leaked, two of the gasketed opening ports leaked, even the sailtrack that's throughbolted leaked. I woke the next morning from persistent drips of water on my head...


Thu, 7/28

In Muskegon Lake, close to Snug Harbor

OK, on to good news - the autopilot proved itself fixed (apart from a small 'cosmetic' issue that the course selector knob sometimes kind of slips.) On exiting Muskegon lake I passed the USS Silversides, a museum submarine. That beast has 2400 tons vs. the Caprice's 7...

The USS Silversides, a WW2 fleet submarine - that thing is huge!

For a change, I didn't have technical or weather trouble today - it was kind of foggy/misty and the wind died several times, which made me use the diesel half the time. Just before Pentwater I passed Little Point Sable and observed plenty people on the beach.

Little Point Sable

Just north of there are huge sand dunes that are apparently some kind of ATV playground, I saw dozens of vehicles racing up and down the slope. To each his own hobby!

And now, finally, anchored at Pentwater, and even some WIFI now and then. I haven't actually touched Michigan yet because I haven't stepped off the boat since leaving Racine on Tuesday morning.

North Channel Adventure

7/24

We started our trip to the North Channel seriously delayed - Chicago had the heaviest rainfalls since records began, violent thunderstorms and a very uncomfortable heatwave. We had planned to sleep on Caprice the night before the trip to be able to get far on the first day - however, the thunderstorms that night made that look like a bad idea. 

We only arrived at the boat at 1PM, and after provisioning, pumping out, and final farewells and kisses with the admiral, I left the harbor at 3PM. Unfortunately, wind was right on the nose, from the north. That would have been good to cross to Michigan, but since I took off late, staying on the Illinois coast was the only option.

 So, I motorsailed north, and at 9:30PM stopped at my winter storage place for the night. The trip had been so calm that I even grilled and had dinner at 7PM, while sailing. The night was peaceful and thankfully a little cooler than the sweltering day.

7/25 

The next morning I got up early to attempt to cross the lake. I had a cunning plan to sail not just east, but try to get as much north as possible, too. After leaving the harbor I quickly realized that pointing north was going to be very wet and uncomfortable, and decided to head almost straight east towards Holland, MI.

Still, the boat was rolling violently and burying the bow in the waves a lot. Too late did I realize that the hawsepipe for the anchor chain was open in the direction of the waves. Something else happened first which was much worse - suddenly without warning the large jib came loose. The clew ring had ripped off:

I went below to find the working jib, not exactly thrilled about changing roller-furling jibs with the bow shipping water quite regularly. Also, my tether doesn't reach all the way to the front, and it would have been dangerous. I was spared that decision when it turned out that the working jib wasn't even on the boat - in a fit of clearing up, I had moved it into the attic in Naperville and forgotten all about it.

But first, before failing to find the spare jib, I had to deal with the boat sinking - the forepeak had plenty water standing on the cabin sole, from aforementioned hawsepipe...

I decided to turn back to Winthrop Harbor for repairs. A few hours later - I meanwhile discovered that my wonderful English sailmaker neeedles were all rusty - I had effected repairs with new webbing. Unfortunately the new webbing is not as strong as the original one, so I had to double it.

By now it was again too late to cross the lake, and in any case the winds had diminished to nothing. Again, I headed north at 4PM, and by 6 was able to finally switch off the engine - a light southern breeze started and allowed us to crawl north under main and gennaker. Finally, I arrived at Racine.

The Crew

Admiral:

Captain: