Day 14 & 15: Lake Erie

It was official we had finished the Erie Canal and we had survived the Hudson River with no real issues. We had looked at the map and hoped to spend the next night in Erie Pennsylvania. While Amy and Belle took showers that morning I decided to have my first look at the chart and finally realized just how big Lake Erie is. We were now on what seemed like a hopeless time table and were starting to wonder what we were going to do as it was Friday and I was not sure we would make it back home by Sunday. Grandma had been watching our 1yr old (Max) while we were on this adventure and had planned to leave for vacation Saturday. We were already late getting back and needed to be at work on Monday. At this point we considered trying to get to Cleveland the second day and leaving the boat there to rent a car to go home until we could get another free weekend to bring the boat the rest of the way home.

Well it turns out we were all exhausted and ended up sleeping in, unfortunately we got out of the marina a bit later then we wanted to at about 9:30am and set out on the lake. It turned out to be a great day after the fog cleared from the storm the previous night. We decided to put the sails up and actually try doing some sailing, it was great! We quickly realized that it would be pretty late by the time we made Erie PA so we decided that we had been pretty luckily so far with the boat and we would try sailing though the night to see how much closer we could get to Detroit. We spent the rest of the day motor sailing though the middle of Lake Erie. At this point I should mention that we did not think to bring passports and were a bit afraid of going into Canadian waters without them so we were taking a slightly longer way across the lake to avoid any issues.

We decided to take shifts at the wheel, Amy put Belle to bed around 8 and soon after went to sleep in the cockpit with me with the agreement I would wake her up when I was ready. Sailing at night was one of the best experiences I have ever had; we had a completely clear night and great weather. Being able to look up and see all the stars reminded me of some of the time I had spent up in Maine as we never see that many stars living in the city. We had a fair breeze most the night and it helped us make an extra knot or two over the night. At about 3:30 I woke Amy up and took her place in the sleeping bag.

The next day we past Cleveland (we were maybe 10-15 miles out) and we decided to just keep going as it appeared our luck with the weather was going to hold out. The downside is that we had now been motoring for the last 30hrs and while I thought we might be able to make it to Detroit without stopping for fuel, I knew we would be coming in on fumes and did not want to risk it so we decided to target put-in-bay. We arrived in put-in-bay at about 12:30 on a Saturday night, I really had no idea what the lay out was or where to go so we went to the only dock that our charts listed as having fuel and it happened to be right in the hot spot with all the bars. Needless to say when we finally got off the boat after 38hrs of motor sailing Lake Erie our sea legs blended right in with the drunks wobbling about and we had no problems finding an open pizza place.

We both took turns wondering around a bit as Belle was still asleep on the boat. We noticed that they had a festival planed for kids the next day and it appeared they had another great play ground. Once again Belle was going to get shafted because of our time schedule but I figured if she woke up early enough I would take her over to play for a while and maybe we could get a hot breakfast as I was really getting tired of peanut butter and pop tarts.