Lesson Plan Jumps Across From the Thumb

Saginaw Bay separates the Thumb Peninsula region from Northern Michigan (the northern part of the lower peninsula, opposed to the Upper Peninsula).  It is 28.6 miles from the tip of the Thumb to Au Sable but we are heading to Harrisville (45.7 miles). In my last blog I anticipated that we would gain sight of the land in front of us before we lost sight of the land behind us, due to the height of the trees, buildings, etc.  I missed two things in my calculations.
1. We were running a course of 335 degrees and the coast of Michigan runs at about 7 degrees. Therefore the land below where we were heading was further away than I originally thought, until I fixed our course on the chart plotter.

Our course across Saginaw Bay

2. The land in this part of Northern Michigan is relatively low, no high rise buildings, wind turbines  etc.
So we lost sight of land (if you count seeing the wind turbines behind us) for about an hour and a half (8 miles or so).
We had a pretty good ride across Saginaw Bay.  We were able to put the sail up, but the wind was only at about 40 degrees off the nose, so we had the sails pulled in tight.  This also meant the wind driven waves were also about 40 degrees or less, which at times really slowed our speed.  The first couple of hours we were making 8 MPH.  But, as the waves built up our speed started suffering. We were pounding into 3 to 5 ft waves. Sometimes the spray would come up and drench the dodger (a sort of windshield on the boat).  We were sure happy to have a dodger and side curtains.  At one time we were down to 5.5 MPH.

We made it to Harrisville with the wind still blowing pretty strong.  We were headed to the marina for fuel. I told Steve not to worry, the wind and waves would die down once we got past the break wall, wrong.  The waves were going right up the inlet channel and the wind wasn't phased by some measly break wall (it was only about 3 ft over the water level).  We had to go around the fuel doc and try to get tied up on the down wind side of the dock (the wind would be trying to blow us off the doc as we approached it).  I rounded the corner of the dock and saw a 65' luxury yacht sitting at the end of the fuel dock, gulp.  I missed the doc on the first try, because I thought I would have more room to work with. I backed off and used the skills I learned at Port Huron and headed straight for the corner of the dock. We made it on the second attempt with the help of the dock hands catching lines for us. We got fuel and enjoyed the night in Harrisville. We did a little provisioning, laundry and changed the engine oil (& filters).

A great sailing day

Before Gary left I told Steve that hat Gary brought good luck for the weather, we did not have any weather delays. I said you should rub his head or something to transfer that good luck. Although we had an elective weather delay in Port Huron (more of a resting day), our weather has been very good.  Rubbing Gary's head for weather luck really helped out on Tuesday. Our plan was to go to Presque Isle for an anchorage. But we were making such good time we were going to arrive in Presque Isle about 2:30. We decided to go on another 15 miles to Calcite/Rogers City (another two hours).


As we were approaching the last peninsula we had to get around before Calcite harbor, we saw a storm building in front of us. We were pretty sure it was headed more east than south, but we wasted no time getting into the anchorage.  We could hear the thunder rumbling out of the clouds, even though we couldn't see any lighting, yet.  Just as we started to put out the anchor the wind started picking up. I scurried to the front to let the anchor out.  Since there were no other boats anchoring in the harbor I put out all 100' of chain I had as Steve backed the boat up.  He set down on the anchor and made sure it was dug in good.  About five minutes later the wind hit us.

Rainbow after the storm

The main part of the storm passed east of our position, out over Lake Huron (where we had been 20 minutes earlier).  We saw 35 kn on the wind indicator, but fortunately we didn't get any rain. We were treated to a rainbow after the storm passed.  Just as Steve was taking a picture of the rainbow, a bolt of lightning hit on the hillside next us, just to remind us that lightning can trail the storm.

After the storm passed we had a peaceful night at anchor, weather wise.

We anchored near a loading facility for crushed stone.  Guess what, they crush stone and load all night long.  One ship comes in another one leaves.

One of the big ships coming in to be loaded with crushed stone.

Lessons Learned:  If you can see he storm, you may get a closer look at a lightening bolt than you like.

Don't anchor near a stone crushing plant.

Check out the map for more pictures (click on the way point and then the link).

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