We got up and took showers before we left Ford Yacht Club and then left mid morning for Put-In Bay. A couple of milestones today. Our first journey into Lake Erie and we are leaving the state of Michigan and entering the state of Ohio. We only have about 30 miles to go today since we broke up our journey to Put-in-Bay into 2 days.

We had light winds out of the northwest so we motor sailed most of the way there.

Put-in-Bay is a popular bay on the island of South Bass Island which is in the middle of the western side of Lake Erie. South Bass Island is just to the east of Rattlesnake Island, we aren’t going there. They say Put-in-Bay rivals Mackinac Island but without the horses. Here they have golf carts instead of horses.

We picked up a mooring ball in the field of mooring balls in the bay just in front of all the action. Here is a photo from our boat on the mooring ball.

Here’s Painkiller sitting in the mooring field.

There’s a water taxi here that comes to your boat to pick you up to take you to shore with all the great shops, bars, restaurants, etc. We found a tiki mojito bar that suited our tastes and they even had really cool rope swings to sit at the bar.

The shoreline has a beautiful park and the famous boardwalk.

There are several restaurants in the boardwalk area. Most have some form of lobster on their menu. They are known for their lobster bisque however, it’s a bit hot today and having hot soup didn’t sound too appetizing. Mark had a perch & walleye dinner and I had the lobster roll. We sat on the upper deck overlooking the bay and could see Painkiller from our table.

We were tired and decided to turn in early since tomorrow we are heading to Cleveland and have a little over 51 miles to get to Cleveland. An update on Mark’s mom – we have decided to fly home from Cleveland for several days to see Mark’s mom and see how things are going and to visit family. Spent most of the evening booking airfare to get us home and back to Cleveland.

As we were tucked in bed and ready to fall asleep we heard a lot of booming racket outside. At first it startled us a bit before we understood what was going on. There was an entire fireworks show going on just behind our boat! How cool! On a Monday night? We got out of bed to enjoy the 30 – 40 minute fireworks display. It was one of the best fireworks displays we have seen in sometime. Nice cap off to the evening.