The Adventures of Twoflower

 July 18-19, 2021 Lk St Clair We did our first over-night anchorage since the trip on Sunday night.  We anchored out in Fisher Bay in Lk St Clair, arriving for sunset. When the sun went down, we had the eerie experience of thousands of midges dropping on to the Bimini and all over the boat.  We could actually hear them falling onto the canvas above us.  It was almost as if they were solar-powered and once there power source was gone, they died instantly.   In the morning, the entire boat was coated in dead midges.  It took a few hours with a power washer to get the fiberglass clean.  We 'll have to wait for the wind and rain to clean the sails.

 July 17, 2021 Lk St Clair Today we worked on the sailboat (re-sealing the mast where it goes through the deck and was leaking a bit) but were lucky enough to be offered a break by our well-neighbor Matthew and his sister.  He took us, Feather included, for a quick spin on his power boat around the bay. This was a(mother) new experience for Feather; she didn't know quite what to do, so she walked around and around the boat, up to and down from the foredeck, until finally she got the nerve up to go into the cabin.  I'm not sure we would have been invited, but everyone loves Feather. After we got back from that bit of fun, we finished up our work and did some stupid pet tricks. Then I went and picked up a pizza (we highly recommend the Lk St Clair Pizza from Bitto's Little Italy) and went for a sail.  Feather wasn't very interested in her kibble when there was pizza to be had. When she finally deigned to eat, she couldn't be bothered to stand up to do so.

 ...you can see forever July 21,2021 Just an incredibly clear, absolutely perfect day for a sail.                                             Miles of visibility A few shots of the neighbors...  And a few of the sunset.

 July 23, 2021 Lk St Clair So far we've been incredibly lucky with Feather aboard...in that she's actually stayed aboard.  The few times (including tonight before we launched) that she's ended up in the water, it has been from the dock. The statistics for a Man Overboard are pretty grim: ( https://www.great-lakes-sailing.com/man_overboard.html ) With years of kayaking experience between us, Chuck and I are fairly certain that we can stay calm in the case that one of us goes overboard, and we're very good about being appropriately geared up.  Even more importantly, we regularly talk about what we will do if.... For the sake if this discussion, we should consider Feather a non -swimmer, at least for now.  So far, when she has fallen off the dock, she has stayed on top of the water, but mostly it seems she's trying to climb on top of the water, more than that she is comfortably swimming in it.  Just like the practice that I'm writing about now, we owe it to Feathe

Harrisville Marina is a city owned marina with excellent facilities.  Our first surprise upon docking is that we were met by an all-female crew of workers.  When they told us that the Harbormaster was also female, we were even more pleased.  On the Great Lakes, at least, a female Harbormaster is a bit of a unicorn.  She told us that she knew of only two others in all of the Great Lakes. We were given an excellent boat slip, and information about amenities and local interest.  When I took Feather to the Dog Run, I could hear music wafting down the hill towards the marina.  I had been cooking on the way in to the harbor, so I hurried back to the boat and asked Chuck if we could do "takeout".  It took only a moment for me to convince him to let the boat chores wait while we climbed the hill, dinner in  hand, for our first live music event in over a year! And Feather's first ever! Although she didn't seem to get that she was supposed to "face the music". Apparen

 June 15, 2021 Presque Isle to Harrisville 59 miles Thunder Bay National Marine Preserve We actually left the Nordmeer under sail in a moderate to fresh breeze (according to the Beaufort scale (winds of 15-20 mph) with a nice following sea.  We got to surf a little bit on the waves building behind us.  I thought I did a very good job getting the sail up in the wind and waves.  I'm learning.  We even put the Genny up with the Main for a few minutes, but Chuck thought he could feel the Mast step moving (we knew there was an issue when we bought the boat), so it was decreed that we'd have to take it easy for the rest of the trip.   We passed the Thunder Bay Island Light to starboard. I think the Captain was grateful for conditions in which he could just let the autopilot do its thing.  (That obnoxious squeaky noise at the end of the video above is the autopilot.) We actually got to do 4 hours under sail! Next, we passed Sturgeon Point. By now we were motoring again, not because th

June 15, 2021 Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary The Nordmeer has a modern mooring buoy ( https://youtu.be/utuqKPKPl7Y ) with a solar light and anchor line.  Chuck had told me to look for floating bleach containers or other homemade markers (which we found on some of the other sites). As I said in the last post, he's done this a few times, and he spotted the buoy well before I did.  Since I'd never been on a  dive boat before, and since we needed a steady hand at the tiller to get us secured (not it!), Chuck explained the process to me several times before we got there.  In addition to the anchor line, there is a bright yellow, easy-to-spot tag line for dive-boats; it has a loop at the end, and dive boats secure themselves to the buoy by passing a line from the bow of the dive boat through the loop and back to the bow of the boat.  Once you're tied off, you can cut the engines and just float above the wreck.  I managed to grab the tag line in only a couple of tries (all

 June 15, 2021 Presque Isle to Harrisville In spite of the excitement of the previous evening, we were up early (Feather's Fault), and decided to head on out.  Our plan was to make our way down the thumb maybe to Port Austin or Lexington, but first Chuck wanted to see a man about a shipwreck. Now, many of you may have noticed that I have this thing about lighthouses (that I share with my mother), and some of you may have even thought to yourselves that Chuck "is a saint for humoring her like this..." as we went out of our way to get pictures of every lighthouse within a 50 mile radius during our trip (not literally). What you may not know is that the reason Chuck and I work is that we've both come to love, not only tolerate, the other's idiosyncrasies.    Chuck has a thing about shipwrecks.     And  OK, maybe Chuck just tolerates my love of lighthouses, but I really am fascinated by the shipwrecks he has shared with me over the years.    On one of my first kayak p

  I messed up Tuesday. The  forecast  was for 10-20 mph winds, 30% chance of thunderstorms- our typical summer  forecast . I invited my sister & her friend out for a spontaneous evening sail. My sister is a semi experienced boater and needed to get out of the house. Friend has been on boats before, but no real experience. So, I'm basically  single  handing, with a bit of help available. No problem.  The ancient TP5000 tillerpilot picked picked yesterday to stop working. No big deal, we're just going for an easy sail. We  head  out, and I leave the main covered and unroll about 60% of the 150 genny.  This seems perfect in the 15 to 20 mph breeze.  We're sailing nicely- easy. There is a bit of rain coming, so we put up the  canvas .  I didn't see a sign of anything but a little rain, from a pretty low and thin cloud. As the rain approaches, we get hit by a gust, maybe 40mph. I  head  up, expecting the gust to pass. Nope. It's steadily building. Sister is having fu