We spent a nice 3 day weekend at North Star Sailing Club. Thank you to Mike and Mike & Cheryl for the recommendation to stay here and being our hosts. We are staying in Mike’s slip while he is out and about exploring. The harbormaster at North Star Sailing Club was welcoming and accommodating! Other members welcomed us as well and stopped by to chat.

Our first full day at North Star, we were starting to think about our transit through the Welland canal and the Erie canal. We thought we would really benefit from having a couple of large round ball fenders for the boat.

Now anytime we are in a port/harbor, we are limited to the distance we can either walk, bike (if there are bikes available), dinghy or perhaps uber (if there is such service in the area). In order to go shopping for 2 large ball fenders, we googled and found a West Marine store just a few miles from our location. The West Marine was very close to the Clinton river, where we are, just up stream a couple miles. So, we decided to hop in the dinghy and take a dinghy ride up stream to find the West Marine.

Time to gas up the dinghy!

The Clinton River and St Clair Shores which is just to our north, is referred to as the Nautical mile and boasts boating with a capital “B”. This area has one of the highest concentration of boats and boaters in the world. This also means they have a vast array of boating services available as well, so it makes sense we were able to locate a West Marine store nearby.

The Clinton River shoreline is fully lined with docks that lie perpendicular to the river and cover the entire shoreline on both sides.

We enjoyed our dinghy ride up the river!

We were successful in our shopping trip and we were able to get the fenders we needed. Yes, we still have to inflate them!

We took the dinghy across the river from where the boat is to the restaurants located there to grab a bite to eat.

We also got a phone call from Mark’s brother about his mom. His mom is in the hospital after collapsing at her apartment. We are waiting for more details about really happened and for them to complete some tests to learn more.

The next day we spent quite a bit of time on the phone with family. We learned that Mark’s mom had a stroke. Lots to think about. Do we leave the boat and fly home? Where would we leave the boat? Where could we fly home from. We know that we cannot accomplish any of these things in the Clinton River. We can’t leave our boat here for an extended period of time since we are in someone else’s slip. And no real airport nearby to fly out of and no ground transportation to get us to an airport.

We spent the rest of the day pampering ourselves and had a spa day. I cut Mark’s hair and he gave me a pedicure.

We decided we should leave the next morning and head toward Detroit and Cleveland in case we do need to fly home at some point.

Later this evening we had storms roll in. We were expecting some rain, but what we didn’t expect was a tornado warning. We had been looking at the radar and the sky as the storm approached and weren’t too worried until the tornado sirens went off. Now looking at the radar is one thing, but that doesn’t necessarily tell you if there is a tornado and where it is. So, we turned on our handheld VHF radio and tuned into a radio weather station. They were talking about tornado warnings, possible tornados and radar indicated tornados and then they started listing off all the counties in the path of the storm. What county are we even in? We didn’t know! We had to do some googling to see what county we were in and listen some more to determine how at risk we were. Should we stay on the boat? Should we go into the yacht club building? Ultimately, we learned that the brunt of the storm is just to our south, so we think we are going to be just fine. We had dark and green looking sky, rain and just a bit of wind.

Once this storm blows through we should have nice weather tomorrow for our trip down the Detroit River and to Put-in-Bay, OH.