Beaver Island has a permanent resident population of about 550 people. Certainly in the summer the population grows considerably. Of course, being an island, everything must be brought over from the mainland via the ferries that run multiple times a day from Charlevoix. There are 2 ferries that run – The Emerald Isle and the Beaver Islander.

Today is the Beaver Island 4th of July parade! Right down main street with everyone in attendance. Don’t expect fancy floats or huge animal balloons, everything here came from the creative ingenuity of the locals who use the resources they have at hand to put together a festive event. Otherwise it would have to come over on the ferries.

We scoped out our spot on the curbside of the main street directly across from the community center which had the local radio station, WVBI, broadcasting the commentary of the parade as it progressed down the street.

Here is an indication of the crowd gathered for the parade:

As we waited for the parade to start, the radio station was playing patriotic music, such as God Bless the USA. I went over to grab a hotdog, chips and a soda for Mark and I inside the community center across the street for lunch as we waited for the parade.

The parade kicked off with veteran color guard carrying the American flag. My faith in humanity was restored as we witness a family sitting near us with a mom, dad and 2 pre-teen boys. As the veterans approached the dad said “Stand up boys and take your hats off” I love the respect for our veterans, respect for our flag being taught by this dad to his young sons!

The parade consisted of homemade floats, cars decorated to represent groups, businesses or people, fire trucks, etc. It seemed that everyone who was a permanent resident of the town was represented in the parade. The community center had put together small gift bags with candy, treats and small toys for every kid in town and were handing them out to all the kids. Most of the kids were in the parade with their families so as cars or floats went by the treat bags were handed to the kids.

Here’s a sampling from the parade:

The guy on the top of that RV is none other than Michael Beans! We were shocked, what is Michael Beans doing in Beaver Island? Who is Michael Beans you ask? He is a singer/entertainer/pirate who we have heard several times in our travels to the British Virgin Islands. Most anyone who has sailed in the BVI has likely heard of, or been entertained by Michael Beans. But what the heck is he doing in Beaver Island? Turns out Michael is from Michigan and got his start some 40 years ago playing gigs in Beaver Island for friends around a campfire. Small world.

Later after the parade and into the evening, we headed down to the Shamrock bar and grill to sit on the patio and listen to Michael Beans! It was an awesome evening. It was a pretty windy evening with a front coming through and as we were enjoying the music of Michael Beans, they announced at the bar that a boat was dragging across the anchorage. So, glad it wasn’t us and we decided to bring the boat to the dock!

The fireworks were actually on July 5th, not sure why. But it was an awesome display!

We left Petoskey on July 2nd heading for Beaver Island. We will spend the 4th of July at Beaver Island and we are told they have a parade as well.

First let me tell you a little history about Beaver Island. Did you know that Beaver Island once was the only kingdom with a crowned king that has ever existed in the United States? James Jesse Strang was the Mormon king of Beaver Island. You are likely all familiar with Brigham Young who was a Mormon leader who led his people to Salt Lake City, Utah. James Jesse Strang was competing with Brigham Young as the declared leader of the Mormon church. James led his people to Beaver Island. In 1850 James was crowned king at a coronation held by his followers. It turns out that declaring yourself king can draw unwanted attention from the federal government. James was arrested and taken to Detroit to stand trial for treason. However, he was acquitted and returned to Beaver Island and celebrated by his followers. In June of 1856, just 6 years after he was crowned king, the USS Michigan – the same naval warship that took Strang to trial in Detroit – was again docked in the harbor at St. James.

The story goes that Strang was invited to join the captain on the ship for dinner. And as he walked down the dock, two men shot him in the back and the head.

It’s not clear just how involved the U.S. government was in the attack on Strang. But the two assailants and their families were whisked away on the USS Michigan.

They were never charged with a crime. Strang later died of his injuries a few weeks after the attack.

We made it to the kingdom of Beaver Island around 2 pm after leaving Petoskey around 8 am.

We found a spot in the anchorage to drop our anchor and settle in for the evening. Now one of the questions you might ask is, “How do you know where to anchor?” Well, we use various resources, one of which is an app/website called “Active Captain”. Think of this as the trip advisor for the boating world. Others who have stayed in anchorages or marinas leave their reviews and comments about the spot. What they liked, what they didn’t like, what to see, what to do, etc.

Now some of the reviews on Active Captain said that the anchorage at Beaver Island can be weedy and as a result some have experienced poor holding due to the weeds. We picked what we hoped would be a good spot and set our anchor alarm and kept a sharp eye on items on shore to ensure we were not moving. An anchor alarm is another app that we have where you can mark the spot where you dropped your anchor and then set a radius that would depend on how much anchor chain you have used. If your boat moves outside of that defined radius or circle then an alarm will sound so that you can do something if your boat is moving too much. All seemed well into the evening and night.

As we slept we felt and heard the wind pick up around 3 am. I am not sure I slept much after 3 am with all the noise of the rigging banging, the anchor and chain banging and the wind howling. The wind was up to about 20 knots by around 6 am. Mark was actually awake and out of bed around 6 am watching the situation and our anchor alarm. All of a sudden around 7:30 am I hear Mark say, “We need to move now!” “We are dragging anchor!” I got up as quickly as I could and threw on whatever clothes were nearby. Before I even really had my eyes open, I was at the helm maneuvering the boat as Mark was pulling the anchor up. Once we got the anchor off the bottom, it was readily apparent why we were moving with the increased wind and the huge ball of weeds that engulfed our anchor. You literally couldn’t even see the anchor, just a ball of weeds. Our anchor was stuck in the weeds but not stuck to the bottom of the lake as it should be.

It took Mark about 20 minutes to pull off all the weeds from the anchor with a boat hook while I was motoring us around the harbor waiting for this task to be completed. Once we were able to free the anchor from it’s weedy casing, we could set about the task of finding a new spot to drop it in the water again and hopefully have it hold to the bottom in sand or mud rather than weeds.

We dropped the anchor one more time, watched and waited, set the anchor alarm and hoped for the best. The wind was starting to die down and the rest of the day the winds were very quiet and calm. So we stayed exactly where we wanted to. However, we looked at the forecast for the winds for the next couple of days and the winds were only going to pick up both on the 4th and 5th. Wind speeds were looking to be 20 – 30 knots. We called the Beaver Island marina and even though we didn’t have reservations they were able to squeeze us in at the dock so we could have a good night sleep without having to worry about the anchor alarm.

When it was calm we did manage to take the dinghy into the small town here and explore and have some lunch. Here is our dinghy, her name is Nutmeg!

Here is the great little place we had lunch at. Sat on the porch with views of the water/marina.

The anchorage was beautiful and we certainly enjoyed it when it was calm and we weren’t worrying about our anchor. We enjoyed the sunset and sitting on the bow on the evening of July 3rd.

The people in that boat pictured in the sunset, got in their dinghy shortly after we took these photos, so we waved them over to let them know we took some cool shots of their boat with the sunset and we could send the photos to them. As they pull up in their dinghy, flashes of recognition happen with both of us. This is Jordan and Mary Beth. We met them a year ago on Mackinac Island during our stay there and here they are anchored in front of us. Reconnecting, questions and answers ensued which then led to a sunset dinghy ride and concluded with rum aboard Painkiller. Fun night!

Once we left Lake Charlevoix it was a quick 3 hour motor to Petoskey. There was little to no wind today hence the need to motor. When the wind is calm, unfortunately that often means the flies will descend. This passage did not disappoint in that regard. By the time we got to Petoskey the first order of business was to wash the boat. We spent about 2 hours giving her a good scrub to get off all the bug remnants. Then we headed to the showers to clean up ourselves.

We walked around town to check out the shops and had a late lunch/early dinner at Duffy’s Garage which had fabulous brick oven pizza that was amazing. Then we headed back to the boat for our nightly round of cribbage and watching the sunset.

The next day brought spotty showers. We seem to be in the weather pattern of showers and fronts coming through and have yet to experience the high pressure systems that typically bring warm and sunny summer weather. When you live on a boat there are tasks associated with just living that one must accomplish, today it was laundry day. The marina has washers and dryers in their lounge building to make this an easy task. $2 to wash and $2 to dry.

We also spent some time talking with our boat neighbors aboard Wind Dance – Mike and Cheryl who are from the Detroit area and have brought their boat around to Lake Michigan from Lake Huron. We sat and reviewed the charts together and they were able to share with us a wealth of information about Lake Huron. Where to go, where not to go, where to eat, where to dock, etc. It is awesome meeting new people and getting local knowledge from people who have been there before.

The rest of the day was spend doing I don’t know. Sort of falls into the category of “I don’t know what I did today, but it took all day”

The next day was socked in with fog…the entire day. Today is shopping day in town to gather some items that are on our shopping list.

Here are some of the foggy pics:

The fog seemed to have settled in the marina and near the water however, when we headed up the hill and into town it seemed less foggy here. One of our stops was the local hardware store to buy a new hose for washing the boat. Even the hardware store has a cute store front.

We stopped in a variety of other stores and shops along the way and took some photos of the park that runs through the center of town.

That my friends is Ernest Hemingway, who liked to spend time in Petoskey, MI. Where hasn’t Hemingway spent time?

We also spent some time with another couple that we met here in Petoskey last year. Kevin and Joanne who own an Island Packet 350. Last year when we met they had just purchased their boat that very week and have now enjoyed a full year of owning Wild flower. They are a few years behind us in terms of timeline but they are hoping to leave the dock and depart for southern shores and perhaps the Bahamas. The cruising community on the water seems to be very small and most people we meet, it isn’t goodbye, it’s see you later! Based on conversations we expect to run into a lot of people we have met previously in the Bahamas.

In town we found this amazing little general store, Symon’s general store. It’s a bit of a deli, specialty foods and wine kind of place. I prefer to think of it as the happy hour store. They literally have everything you need there for a proper happy hour. Meats, cheeses, snacks, spreads, etc. And wine! The entire basement of the store is this really cool wine cellar that feels like you are in Italy some where. They have some white linen draped tables with a small kitchen that they can host small private dinners. And you feel like you are eating in the wine cellar. The wine selection here was outstanding.

On our last day in Petoskey, the weather finally cleared enough for a proper sunset!

We really have no idea anymore what day it is, so we gave up and now call everyday Blursday. After we left the Charlevoix marina we headed east into Lake Charlevoix to anchor for several days in Oyster Bay. It’s a very protected area with nice lake homes dotting the shores and wooded with pine trees. It feels like being up north somewhere in Minnesota. In this area of the lake there is no place to go ashore since it is all private homes.

While we were here on anchor, it quite literally rained for 3 days solid, or so it seemed.

It started out with just a cloudy, foggy sort of day as we made our way into Lake Charlevoix and into Oyster Bay. Here are some photos from along the way.

We spent 3 days looking for things to keep us busy on the boat in the rain. I must say we very much appreciate the enclosure for the cockpit as it really gives us a whole additional room in the boat and allows us to sit in the cockpit even while it is raining. Otherwise we would have to sit down below in the boat and really can’t see what is happening outside.

I did some yoga on the front deck when it wasn’t raining, we spent some time doing fill it in books and puzzles. We also do “normal stuff” that you all do everyday such as make the bed, pick up the “house”, do some cooking, etc. However we probably do some stuff that you all don’t do everyday such as watch our anchor alarm to make sure we aren’t moving and we are staying where we intend to. Zip up the enclosure, unzip the enclosure, open the hatches, close the hatches, etc.

One of the things that is a bit different is how we store things and how we have to play “Jenga” to move things to get to other things. As a result, anything we do on the boat takes twice as long. As an example, Mark thought he would make me a bracelet out of paracord to pass the time. The items he needed to do this are stored under our bed. This requires moving all the things from under the bed, opening the compartment, finding the container that the paracord is stored in and getting it out and then reversing all these steps to put it back. It looks something like this:

Here’s Mark hard at work making me a bracelet. Thanks honey! And a picture of the final product!

One evening we were grilling up some hamburgers and sitting in the cockpit and saw what appeared to be a person moving quickly across the water while standing up. This looked really weird, like how was he doing that? There was no sail like a wind surfer, there was no motorized sound, he wasn’t being towed by something. This is something we have never seen before. As he came closer to our boat we were able to get some photos of him. It looks like a motorized surf board but perhaps with an electric motor since it was virtually silent. Here’s what he looked like and our hamburgers, yum!

The next day was more rain and laying around. We have had quite a cribbage tournament going over several days. I have been kicking Mark’s butt at cribbage.

With all the rain and no sunshine our solar panels are not producing much electricity to put back into our battery bank. We have 600 amp hours of battery bank (6 group 27 AGM batteries) for the house bank. We can use about 300 amp hours of the battery bank and we are have currently used about 160 amp hours from our battery bank, so we like to get them recharged and back to a more full state. In order to charge our batteries, we can do that in a number of ways. 1) run the engine 2) run the generator 3) solar panels 4) wind generator. Right now due to the weather 3 & 4 are not options, no wind and no sunshine. We decided to run the generator for bit and recharge our batteries.

Running the generator snowballed into checking it out and then changing the oil since Mark was already in there. Again, we play boat “Jenga” since everything that we store in our cockpit lockers (lazarettes) has to be removed to get underneath the cockpit where our generator lives. The cockpit lockers are rather large and here are all our worldly possessions removed to change the generator oil.

Literally no one can move until everything is put back in it’s place.

Most of the time, I am sure all you dear readers think that this is what we are doing on this sailing trip:

But, here is what we are really doing:

I also made some chocolate chip cookies one afternoon. I was hoping the dry heat from the oven would help get rid of the dampness that has over taken the boat and everything we own. The cookies were delicious!

Finally on the morning that we left Oyster Bay, it was nice enough to show you what a beautiful anchorage this is:

Charlevoix was one of our favorite stops last year as we made our way around Lake Michigan, so it was high on the list for a repeat visit this time around. We spent 3 days in the Charlevoix City Marina mostly due to some high winds and weather that was predicted to head our way and with high winds, we would prefer to be at a dock rather than on anchor.

After our excitement with the water spouts we pulled into Charlevoix around 5 pm and got settled at the dock and then made our way into town to seek out some dinner. We stopped at one of our favorites, the Bridge Street Tap Room. It was a bit chilly, so we ate inside and they had some awesome smoked brisket. I had the smoked brisket sandwich and Mark has the smoked brisket nachos. It was delicious!! We walked back to the boat and we were in bed pretty early since we have been up since 4:30 am.

The next day we took a long walk around town to see some of the sights. We were told that the Charlevoix library was a place to stop and see. In 2006 the new Charlevoix public library was opened to the public. The building was a previous middle school that was built in 1927 and was completely renovated to the tune of $2 million dollars. It is quite an elaborate library for a town of just over 2,000 people. Here are some highlights:

Next, we walked to a well known historical district of the town to see the Mushroom Houses. Builder Earl Young built houses of local materials such as limestone, field stone and boulders to fit within the natural landscape of the building site. The key features of his designs include wide wavy eaves, exposed rafter tails, cedar-shake roofs or thatched roofs. Because of their whimsical design they are often referred to as Gnome homes, mushrooms houses or Hobbit houses. There are several examples of his housing designs within a block or two area of downtown Charlevoix. Here are the ones, we captured:

We walked back to the main street and had lunch at the Village cafe right on the sidewalk and then got a few necessities at the local grocery store. The rest of the day was spent hanging on the boat, watching other boats come in and having some dinner aboard.

The next day there was a farmer’s market in Charlevoix that we went to go check out. They had quite a variety of farm fresh items and crafts to choose from. We settled on some fresh strawberries and some homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, YUM!

The weather we were expecting arrived today and it rained for much of the afternoon. So, we made the best of our time and organized the aft cabin in the boat, we will be having guests aboard in the next couple of weeks. We also tackled a project on our to do list. We replaced the carpet on our stair treads that go down into the boat. To say they were worn and gross was an understatement. I am not certain you could vacuum the dirt out of them any more. Now they look awesome and brand new.

Here is where our stairs normally go. We have removed them to change out the carpet.

The stairs all complete and back in place!

We had a great final dinner in town at the East Park Tavern and called it a night. Tomorrow we plan to move out into Lake Charlevoix and anchor for several days.

The day started well enough…We got up at about 5 am to make the passage from Frankfort, MI to Charlevoix, MI which is about 64 nautical miles. This is a long day for us and will take us about 12 hours to complete, which is why we are starting at 5 am.

We are bundled up since it was only 46 degrees when we left the dock this morning! We are going to need some hot coffee! Thanks Mark for making coffee!

The first part of our journey was spent watching the beautiful sunrise over the sandy dunes of the Michigan shoreline.

After the sun rose, we were better able to view the sand dunes that are part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Around about 11 am we started to see clouds building into the west. We knew before we left that there was a chance of showers today, but no one said anything about thunderstorms. We were watching the weather radar on our phones and we were able to see that at first it looked to be just some passing showers. We decided it was time to bring in some of our sail in case the winds picked up ahead of the showers. So, we reefed the mainsail and the jib to better handle any wind gusts we might experience.

This is what the sky looked like as the rain approached. It was still sunny to the north, south and east of this so it looked like an isolated front and on radar it was all green and a very thin line of a front. We hoped a passing shower.

Just as I finished reefing the main sail, I turned back to Mark who was at the helm and then I saw this:

Are you seeing what I am seeing? Yes, folks that a water spout behind the boat. I think I said, “Uh-oh! I don’t like the looks of that!” Which made Mark turn around and look and he exclaimed “That’s a water spout!”

We quickly decided that if there is enough wind in this storm to produce a water spout, there is likely be too much wind to have any amount of sail out. We rapidly took down both the main sail and the jib. I don’t think we have ever done that task so fast before. And since this was behind us, we decided to see how fast our motor would actually go. Let’s floor it!

Keep in mind at this point the water spout was a safe distance behind us, however we still didn’t care for the dark clouds that are continuing to creep toward us from the west that are not quite here yet. We still see clearing to the north and with the increased speed of our motor we are hoping to get to the northern clearing before we are over taken by the dark clouds from the west.

This is what the radar looked like with us being the blue dot on the map.

What was a thin line of green on the radar, erupted into a yellow/orangish blob that you see in the picture.

We were being followed by the “Maria G”, a 656 foot freighter that was about 3 – 4 miles to our stern. She would be right in the way of the worst part of the storm. As we are watching her both on the water and on our AIS, we see that she makes a sharp turn toward the east as if to avoid something. Then looking closely, we see what she was turning to avoid. Water spout #2

Not soon after her turn toward the east that water spout quickly dissipated. As suddenly as it disappeared, water spout #3 reappeared on the other side of the Maria G with a much more organized looking funnel coming down the the clouds.

All this activity lasted for about 20 mins and all of the water spouts were even before the rain or anything ever came. You could see the rain coming and we watched as the rain engulfed the Maria G and she was no longer visible to us. Then we saw the lightening and heard the thunder clap! Storms may be scary enough on a boat, however lightening is the one thing that strikes fear in any sailor. That big tall mast up in the air is like an invitation for lightening to come find you. We temporarily turned off all our navigation and VHF and get out the hand held VHF. Any electrical antennas we have at the top of our mast will also attract lightening.

When the front did get to us, it was thankfully underwhelming. Very little wind and just a bit of rain, one or two more lightening/thunder claps and the whole thing was over. We were very happy we were on the north side of the storm and continuing to head north as quickly as we could. Had we been even a mile or two south of our position back with the Maria G we might have had a different story to tell.

It took us awhile to calm our nerves, recount the story of what had just happened to each other and our family and by that time the sun was shining and we were back to sailing on the remainder of our way to Charlevoix.

Portage Lake was our little refuge from the weather for about 3 days. I really didn’t feel like 3 days however, since the first day we arrived was after our long overnight passage. We were exhausted after pulling an all-nighter. I think all-nighters are more appropriate for when we were college-aged than what our current ages are. I think we hit that stage where you are so tired you don’t know what to do with yourself and almost too tired to fall asleep. All I wanted was some food in my stomach and a pillow under my head. We made some hash browns and eggs. After eating I went straight to sleep for awhile. Mark stayed up for a bit watching the anchor and our anchor alarm to ensure we weren’t moving.

As it turned out, we did drag anchor a bit and Mark was watching and waiting as long as he could to allow me to sleep before we got about the task of pulling up the anchor and resetting it in a better spot. All the reviews on Active Captain tell us that anchoring here is typically full of weeds which don’t usually provide for good holding. Once we pulled up the anchor this was absolutely confirmed by the amount of copious weeds that we pulled up along with the anchor. We motor around the area until we found a spot we liked better and dropped the anchor once again. This time it seemed like it grabbed a hold of the bottom a bit more firmly than last time.

We grilled up some pork chops for dinner and went back to bed. Suffice it to say that the entire day was taken up with eating, sleeping and keeping an eye on the anchor. I am happy to report that the anchor held firm all night with some pretty gusty winds and bouncing around.

The next day, we were a bit more rested and recovered from our night passage and had the energy to set about some tasks that needed attention on the boat. But first we enjoyed coffee and fresh baked scones because you just don’t want to rush into anything. As you might imagine, first on the list was fixing our problem with our navigation nights to ensure they are working properly. Mark first took a look at the bow light that has both a red and green light. Upon inspecting things carefully in the anchor locker in the bow of the boat, Mark found the wires that led to the bow light. He found that the wires were corroded right through at a place where a previous connection had been made. He cleaned up the wires, re-established the connection and solved this problem rather quickly.

Next, he had to check out the situation with our navigational lights at the top of the mast. As you can image the only way to check out the top of the mast is to take the mast down or have someone go up to the top of the mast to inspect it. Since taking down the mast is not an option away from a marina and an expensive proposition, going up the mast is the only other option. Mark went up in the bosun chair, designed for this purpose, and my job was to winch him up there. Winching someone up a 56′ mast by hand is a lot of work and requires a lot of strength, which I don’t really have. So, I had a little help! We have this angle drill aboard that has a bit that fits into the winch and I can motor Mark right up the mast! Don’t know what we would do without this little helper!

Here’s a few photos of Mark up in the bosun chair. We wore headphones so that we could communicate with one another when he was way up top and I was down below.

Mark was able to find the problem. When we had our mast down and before it went back up, Mark reattached the mast head light and had a bit of difficulty with it. It really didn’t seat properly and he wasn’t happy with how it went on. After going up the mast and removing it and re-seating it and aligning it properly, it now seems to work just fine! Another problem solved!

I did some work on the blog and photo organization before we decided to hop in the dinghy and take it across the lake to check out the small village of Onekama which is the only town on Portage Lake. We tied up the dinghy at a small marina on the shore of the village and walked around town. It was a sleepy little village with many closed businesses, perhaps casualties of COVID.

Here are some photos from around town. We stopped and got some ice cream at a little shop and walked across the street to a park and enjoyed the park views and the picnic table.

When we were ready to head back to the boat with the dinghy, the wind and waves had pick up considerably on the small lake and there were white caps. It made for a fun and wet dinghy ride back to the boat! It was pretty hot out at the time and we didn’t mind getting wet!

We made homemade pizza for dinner tonight and it was quite delicious!

And then, of course, we topped off the night with an amazing sunset!

The next morning, we were up around 8 am and first thing we pulled up the anchor to move to a new spot on the north end of the lake. We wanted to move since the winds were predicted to switch out of the north and would make our current anchorage very exposed and not protected from the stronger north winds that we would get today. We were able to get the anchor down without a problem and it seemed to grab a hold right away. Perhaps a lot less weeds over on this side of the lake. No sooner did we get settled on anchor and the front started to come through that we were expecting. It brought with it rain and wind from the north. We made coffee and enjoyed sitting in the cockpit with our enclosure watching the rain.

We spent most of today working on some final details of the enclosure by adding straps and snaps in all the appropriate places so that we can roll up the panels out of the way when they aren’t needed. We did however get in a bit of fun by playing a bit of cribbage.

We both talked about that spending 3 days at anchor was really helpful to de-stress and get in the groove of this sailing journey and leave all the worries about our mast and flurry of activity of getting ready behind and just enjoy being in the moment and enjoy our journey! I will leave you with a few final sunset pics!

We left Manitowoc at around 8:20 pm on Wednesday June 16th. Our plan is to cross Lake Michigan and anchor for a few days in Portage Lake which is near the town of Onekama, Michigan. The passage is about 62 nautical miles which should take us around 12 hours or so to complete.

Why leave at night you ask? A couple of reasons, one, we need a good weather window of at least 12 hours to make the crossing. The weather and wind can be a bit unpredictable on Lake Michigan in June until the settled high pressure weather systems of summer are here, typically in July and August. We also were waiting for 2 packages to arrive at the marina of items we have ordered which are scheduled to arrive Wednesday before we leave. Had it not been for the packages, we might have left sooner. We also want to arrive in day light hours when we get to Michigan, so 12 hours prior makes a departure time of 8 or 9 am or later not practical since we would arrive likely after sunset.

With our timeframe for leaving established, we spent Wednesday getting things ready for departure. Filled the water tanks, filled the diesel tank, emptied the waste tank, last minute load of laundry and stowing things that might fly about while sailing.

We are not the only people leaving the marina this year for parts unknown. Our friends Dwight and Kay aboard “Aurora” just left early Wednesday morning. We are next to leave. Then leaving in August will be Dan and Fawn.

We couldn’t leave without a little celebration, so about an hour before we left, we gather anyone who was here on E dock and popped our special departure bottle of Champagne to share. This bottle was gifted to us by our Pepin family of sailors when we left to ship our boat to Manitowoc and we have set aside this special bottle just for this occasion. A toast to all sailing friends old and new and those on the move! Cheers!

And then we were off!

Once we got offshore, we put up the mainsail, the jib and the staysail. We had about 6.5 knots of wind. As dusk was quickly approaching we watched as the setting sun faded into the skyline of Manitowoc at the stern of the boat. Up ahead the darkness of night was approaching. As is typical, we found the fishing fleet of boat that are usually about 5 – 7 miles offshore and tonight was no exception. Dusk seems to be a difficult time where you have diminishing light with which to see boats, but it is not yet dark enough to see them based on their navigational lights. We make sure we have turned on our navigational lights as well.

We have a tri-color light at the top of our mast that displays red on the port side, green on the starboard side and white to the stern of the boat. It’s difficult to see if this light is on when looking at the top of the mast. We both look and debate for sometime to determine whether our light is on or not. We finally conclude that the light is not on. We also have navigational lights, red, green and white on the boat itself lower down. The white stern light seems to be working, but we don’t seem to have the red and green at the bow working. Uugghhh…yes, we should have checked our lights before we left the dock. That would have made sense, but here we are. So, we turned on any light we could, like our deck light to make sure other boats could see us in the dark. Finally, as we were worrying about our lights and the current fishing fleet of boat traffic around us, we got the bright idea (pun intended) to use our luci lights. If you have never seen luci lights, they are small inflatable lights that are solar charged and you can set the ones we have to different colors. So, we set one to green and put it on the starboard side of the boat and we set one to red and put it on the port side of the boat. Now we have ourselves some homemade navigational lights. The total irony about this is once we got the light up and working we never saw another boat all night.

Our time on passage was spent watching the moon set behind us, watching the darkness over take the horizon and we had about 2 hours in the dead of night when you could not see the horizon on the water. I was on the first watch from 11 pm to 3 am while Mark went down below and slept. I kept up with our logbook, made some coffee and enjoyed that, did some journaling, watched the stars and just enjoyed the waves and the water passing by the boat. It was a beautiful clear night with 10 – 12 knots of wind the entire way and we sailed the entire way without running our engine.

Mark came up on deck about 3 am and I went down for a nap. Mark was on watch from 3 am until about 7 am when I woke up and came back on deck. Mark was witness to a beautiful sunrise on the water. The eastern sky started to brighten about 3:50 am and slowly continued to illuminate the sky. The light glistened on the waves on the port side of the boat, while the starboard side was still dark. Here are some photos of the sunrise from the water.

We were both tired as we motored into Portage Lake but excited to see a new place and get the anchor down and get settled.

Beautiful homes line the shores of Portage Lake. We got the anchor down and we are in need of some sleep!

I am sure you all know what a mast is right? It’s that big stick that goes up in the air that holds our sails. In our case, we have a furling mainsail which means the main sail rolls up into the mast like a vertical window shade. Inside our mast is a furling mechanism called the furling foil that holds the sail in a slot and then rotates so the sail can wind around the foil. See the photo below.

So, the problem is that we stored our mast outside last winter and it was placed in a horizontal position on a mast rack. Unfortunately the aluminum furling foil must have gotten some water in it and froze. This freezing caused the furling foil to crack. When we tried to raise our main sail at the start of the season, the sail would only go up so far and then it got stuck – this was our first clue that something was wrong as this should not happen. Well, it was stuck pretty good because we also could not get the sail back down. We had to go up the mast in the bosun chair to see if we could see what the problem was and see if we could get it unstuck. Mark was finally able to hammer is down so it was no longer stuck.

Once we were able to inspect the mast more closely, we were able to see that there was about a foot long crack in the aluminum foil. It hard to see in the photos but the crack looks like this. Not really very impressive is it.

What this means is that the furling foil will need to be removed from the mast, replaced and put back in place inside the mast. This means we have to have the mast taken down after it was just put up on the boat. Now that foil that is cracked is one long continuous piece of aluminum that is about 50+ feet long. At first we thought we might have had to replace the full 50+ foot long piece. When you think about shipping a part that is 50+ feet long, we are not talking about your standard UPS or FedEx shipment here. If we had to ship a 50+ foot piece that would require special shipping and a special truck. That might take awhile!!

We spent time with several phone calls and conversations with both Manitowoc marina service staff and Sparcraft, who manufactured our mast. We were able to learn that we could have the damaged section of the foil spliced with a new section to address the crack and they could ship a new section that is less than 8 feet long and that could be shipped standard UPS. This is good news since that difference in shipping just saved us about 4 weeks waiting for a new part to arrive!

Next step – have marina service staff remove the furling foil so that it can be repaired. Here is a photo of the actual foil coming out of the bottom of the mast so that a new section can be spliced together where the cracked portion is.

The marina staff had a bit of a challenge getting the foil out of the mast and had to place several calls to Sparcraft to understand how this was put together and how it should come apart. Unfortunately, one of the rigging guys had a bit of an accident as one of our side stays came out of the top of the mast as they were taking the mast off the boat and with gravity assisting the metal side stay fell down and hit him on the top of the head. It sent him to the ER to get some stitches in the top of the head. Ouch!!

Once they were able to get the foil out of the mast, they spliced in the new section and removed the damaged section. That was the easy part! Then they had to put it all back together! It seems it went back to together easier than it was to take it apart, so that’s all good.

Mark and I were sitting in the cockpit yesterday morning enjoying our coffee and Gary the service manager walks down the dock. Evidently, we missed hearing several calls from him that they were ready for us to put the mast back on the boat! Yeah!!! We didn’t know what to expect in terms of a timeline to actually be a sailboat again, so we are pleasantly surprised that they are ready to go!

Most of Tuesday was taken up with getting the mast back in the boat, tuning the rig, putting sails up and generally becoming a sailboat again!

We are happy to be a sailboat again! Now we can think about when we will be departing Manitowoc and heading out on our long awaited adventure.