Its time to sell the tug

Some people say the best two days of boat ownership are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. I disagree. I have generally enjoyed all of our boats. It's weird to say but I think you have to love them like a family member in that some days they really frustrate you and some days they provide an absolutely blissful experience. Not to mention they are a bit like your kids in that both are always needing more money and attention. The other side of that you have to put a lot of your trust into them that they will take care of you along the way ensuring you arrive at the destination safely.

When we bought the tug we originally planned to do the Great Loop in it and sell it when we were done moving back to the sailboat. About the time we were coming back from the Bahamas we realized how little many of the boats down there actually sailed, we were running out of time and would have to skip the Canadian canals, and that we really liked doing the rivers. We also knew we wanted to do the Down East Loop and maybe even the Inside Passage to Alaska with it one summer which would not be ideal in a sailboat. So we decided to put our sailboat that was in storage up for sale and keep the tug. For better or worse the sailboat sold really quick which made things easy. Unfortunately over the last three summers we have not made the time to use the tug as much as we would have liked as it seems that all our kids activities have kept us pretty busy only allowing us to put around 75-100hrs of engine time a year on it.

I have been fascinated with circumnavigation since I was a kid. But it never seemed possible or something that I might be able to do until I found the world of YouTube sailors maybe ten-twelve years ago. Once I saw them doing it and found groups like the Oyster Around the World Rally and the World Arc I knew it was something I really wanted to do. It took a bit of talking but I got Amy to agree to the idea of trying to do it one day. Now that both of my parents have died and my kids are almost out of the house I realized there are not that many more one days so we sat down and put a date on when we wanted to leave. The key was to balance our youth/health, my in-laws health/needs, our kids needs/weddings/grand kids, and the time/money equation. As you can imagine there are a lot of conflicting priorities there but January of 2028 is what we came up with for a date we wanted to leave for that trip. This is basically a long way of saying while we still want to do all of the adventures we planned with the tug. However, we feel like many of those can be done between or while balancing the other life events and maybe its best to do the circumnavigation now and then come back to those smaller adventures closer to home later.

With all of that said I officially signed with a broker today to sell the tug and start focusing our time on learning the sailboat we bought last year for the circumnavigation. I'll miss the tug. It's been a very reliable, easy, and a comfortable boat for us. I hope we can find as nice of a boat once again when it's time to sell the sailboat and buy the boat for the next adventure.

Another busy month went by

It's been a busy month. We've been pretty lucky with the extra warm weather we got here in Michigan up until this week when the weather finally started moving back to normal. The nice weather let us do crazy things like playing with the jetski and sailing dinghy well into October still enjoying the 80 degree days. Unfortunately it's now the end of October and the weather is now moving back to something more normal and its now time to put the water toys away and getting everything ready for winter.

The Tug was the first to come out. It's now winterized and sitting in a barn which will hopefully keep it warm and protected. I've started taking all of our stuff off of it and begun the long process of getting it cleaned and shined up with hopes of listing it for sale  this spring. Unfortunately there is still a lot cleaning and a few small projects to take care of before I can do that which of course include redoing the teak, oiling the wood, lots of scrubbing and polishing trying to get her looking her best for the potential new owners. I've heard the boat market is slow right now so I'm assuming we may get to enjoy her on the Great Lakes much of next summer. I would love to take her up to the North Channel for a month but am not sure how that will workout with Max's schedule and having the other boat that we need to learn to use as well?

In between playing with water toys we have been going to as many of Max's tennis matches as we can this season. It's his Senior year and has been fun seeing how much he has improved from when he started tennis last year. 

While we have very much planned for it, it still seems strange to think we will be empty nesters this time next year. I've heard that between birth and the age of 18 is when one gets to spend 80% of time they get with their kids so I'm going to make sure I enjoy it while I can. 

On that note we have been continuing our college visits. This month we went to check out Western Michigan University, Michigan State, and Hillsdale. The only schools we have not visited are University of Toledo, Ferris, and Eastern Michigan. Two of those he will do as a field trip in school and with his sister going to Ferris I'm not sure he has much interest in following her footsteps. He has worked hard to get good grades over the years and with some effort during the application process should be able to choose from any of the schools he wants. 

At this point he is thinking he wants to be a doctor and is looking at Pre-Med programs. His second thought is something with engineering but he has not found anybody doing fun stuff in the real world that has excited him about that. So we are simply encouraging him to pick a school that offers a lot of choices in majors should he want to make a change after taking a few classes in the subject.

As I write this he is just now starting to fill out a few college applications. It will be interesting to see if he is too late for scholarships and placements has I'm seeing a lot of friends with seniors posting various collage acceptances and scholarships awarded in my Facebook feed recently.

Personally I'm still hoping he will take a break/gap year or more after his first year of school to join us on our circumnavigation. It will be interesting to see where he ends up and what he decides to do?

Annabelle turned 21 a few days ago. She is back doing the Disney College program again this semester working as a lifeguard this time and asked us to come down to celebrate with her by drinking around the world. In Disney speak this means going to Epcot and getting a drink at each of the country's. As it also happens to be their food and wine festival so they have some carts set up for bonus countries as well. She managed to talk us, her grandparents, aunt, and one cousin into joining her for this expedition. I think we ended up having drinks and snacks from 15 different countries by the end of the night. The strangest snack was defiantly the onion cake from Germany. It was a fun way to celebrate and everyone had a good time. We rented a place for a week in Orlando going to the Disney Halloween party, various shows, and spent some time just hanging around the pool for a bit while getting to see Belle when she was not working. It was a good time. Unfortunately Max is still in school and could only join us for a long weekend but it was nice to have both of our kids together even if it was only for a couple days.

As our sail boat is pretty close to Annapolis we decided to attend the annual sailboat show again this year as it's always fun to walk around looking at shinny new sailboats and gear for a few days. One surprise was that a Privilege 510 we looked at last year (and waited too long to make an offer on) was there on display. After getting to see that boat and about a dozen other cats we confirmed that we made a good choice and didn't have any regrets on buying our Xquisite. While there we were able to meet up with three other Xquisite owners to have lunch and chat about experiences and future plans with the boats. From what I can tell it seems most are pretty content sticking to the Bahamas and Caribbean with theirs. We seem to be the odd balls that want to sail around the world but then again three of the four we meet were fairly new to boating and big boats in general. So maybe they will get there and come join us ;).

While at the show we attended an informational session on the World Arc and a cocktail party they had the next night confirming that its probably still the direction we are going to go with when it comes time to circumnavigate. However the Xquisite folks are talking about setting something up soon as well and plan to announce it at the annual owners party this year. I'm looking forward to seeing what their plan is and how much interest they get. Its always better to have choices :)

Life vest testing

This is the first used boat that I've bought that did not come with life vests. Before we left Florida we purchased the minimum find the body West Marine orange life vests to ensure we meet the minimum safty requirements before crossing over to the Bahamas. Knowing that the World ARC folks have some specific requirements for life vests I planned to figure out what they were and order them when I got home, then bring them back before bringing the boat back to the US. This was all well and good except for the fact that one cannot fly with self inflating life vests :(. Luckily we met a boat that was for sale and attempting to sell off all their stuff. Rummaging through their various items we found three very basic self inflating vests that looked like new and snagged them so we would at least have something more comfortable to wear on deck if needed. Fortunately I didn't need it but I did have it on while out on deck during the small storm we went through. Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself...

Life vests we purchased

When we came home from the Bahamas I spent a couple nights reading and watching YouTube videos about the various merits of different life vest systems. There is a lot of information out there but the one that came up as number one or two over and over again was the SpinLock vest here. There are a few versions one can get but I decided when it came to safety and having the best chance of being found at night having the additional lights and releasable harness system was the way to go. According to the marketing the vests had two lights in them. One is inside of the part that inflates and the other is on a stick that pops up to blink adding additional visibility. While I could imagine how this might work unfortunately I have not seen any videos showing the lights in action. I also purchased a set of three point safety lines (also an ARC requirement) ensuring we can be well attached to the boat should we need to go forward on deck in bad weather. Additionally we will eventually add personal locater devices to each of our vests. Hopefully we will find them on sale at the boat show this year. Either way it was easier to spread the costs out a bit as these vests were not cheap.

Personal locator

As I started to mention earlier I had purchased these thinking we would take them back to the Bahamas with us only to find out we could not fly with them due to the CO2 cartridges. I supposed we could have pulled them out and simply planned to manually inflate the vests if needed but that would not due much good if one of us were knocked out or otherwise hurt. Luckily we stumbled across the other vests so we hopefully had something better than the basic orange vests for the return trip home.

While we were out there during my night shifts it really hit me how hard it would be to find someone that went overboard. In the past doing overnight trips on the Great Lakes we could generally see shore even if it was five miles off there was still a certain amount of ambient light. This was not the case in the ocean and with the much larger swells one would be lucky to just keep an eye on someone if they watched them go over but I'm guessing after the first or second swell they would be quickly out of sight. Once the crew could get folks on deck to get the sails down and the boat turned around it might be 5-20 minutes. I would guess the person would be out of sight then they would have to locate the person in the dark probably during bad conditions. I can't imagine the changes are great they would be found easily. With all that said I think I want to be well lighted and as easy to find as possible. Additionally I think the personal locator beacon may help as supposedly as soon as it hits the water it sends out a radio signal that will create an alert on any nearby chart plotters that someone is in the water and needs help. Additionally it will show roughly where they are. While not cheap it seems well worth the money if ever needed and I have seen videos of several folks trying them out showing how effective they are with the chart plotter alarms and integration.

After experiencing dark nights at sea I wanted to see if I had purchased what I hoped I had. Spinlock has what appears to be a number of part numbers and options one can get for their vests. I thought I got the one with all the lights but was not sure. I also wanted to see what it felt like when the vest inflated and how visible the lights would be while also having an idea what I might be looking for if one of us happened to fall overboard. Fortunately my sister in law has a pool and was up for letting me test it out one evening. I also got to test out our new dog's swimming abilities but that's the subject of a different post. The video here shows me testing what the vest looks like in the water and the neat thing is there is a dongle that hangs down so the vest knows when it's in the water. When I got out of the pool it immediately turned the lights out. Pretty impressive as I even jumped back in again to ensure they would turn back on and once again everything worked as it should. This quick video shows the vest in use with the spray hood up. The hood seemed to do what it should. I'm sure it will fog up with heavy breathing but it would defiantly help keep the waves and water out of your mouth making it easier to breathe should one fall off in bad weather.

Three point safety lines

Over all the vest felt like one of the orange vests above and easily kept me afloat in fresh water. It should work even better in salt water. When deployed it was snug around my neck. The strap between my legs was not uncomfortable and the lights appeared to do their job. Hopefully the harness system works as they say it does should I or another crew member not be able to get in the boat the crew could attach a line to the vest using a halliard and electric wench to pull the person out of the water. The only item I was not really impressed with was the included whistle. It took a bit to blow the water out of it and did not seem very loud while in the water but my wife and her sister claimed they could hear it clearly.

Next step learning to repack the vest, replacing the CO2 cartridge, and water deployment sensor. While not an inexpensive test to do I'm glad I tried it out. I now have trust in these fancy new life vests and just hope that it will still deploy correctly after I replace the spent items and get everything zipped back together. After trying it I'm guessing with the addition of a whistle and a light the basic orange vest would work just as well but time will tell if this one is more comfortable to wear during life at sea.

Home for a month

Max rock climbing

As I mentioned a few posts back buying a boat was not in our plans for this summer. Like most parents we have a seventeen year old kid with a full schedule which means we have a full schedule to support those plans. Once we landed it was time to shift gears and start getting ready for a week of Scout Camp. Fortunately we had got home on Friday which gave us Saturday to rest and prep to leave the next day on Sunday with several other leaders also transporting car loads of teenagers and a Troop trailer in tow. 

Max & I kayaking at Summit

Max has been a Scout since first grade when he joined as a Tiger and I've been a leader since second grade doing most of the various scouting positions along the way including running various STEM programs and Shooting Sports in our area. For us Scouts has allowed both of us to learn a lot and have a number of experiences I'm sure we would not have had following our everyday path. Last year he earned his Eagle Scout award and with moving to a new school at the same time which offered a much larger number of athletic programs and clubs he has found more interest in those activities (and girls) then Scouts. So I've begun to back out as well. Having been a leader for 11 years now, it's probably best to make room for new blood ensuring other parents get to have the same fun I did with their kids. With all of that said this would be our last summer camp before he ages out of scouts and we hoped to make it a good one. Our Troop decided to head to West Virginia this year to visit one of the bigger camps called Summit Bechtel Reserve.  The nice thing about this camp was they have a lot of high adventure activities most the other camps don't have. With no required merit badges to earn Max made the most of his time white water rafting, doing ropes courses, playing on zip-lines, rock climbing, mountain biking, and swimming.

Trap Team at Nationals

After a hot and exhausting week at summer camp it was time to switch gears once again. I am also the head coach for his high school trap team. Our team had qualified for Nationals. Fortunately Nationals is only about 3.5hrs away in Columbus, OH. We got back from camp on Sunday and had to be in Columbus on Monday morning for the teams first event. Luckily I have some good assistant coaches that were taking RV's up and did all of the meal planning and shopping for the team ensuring everyone would be well feed, rested, and hopefully hydrated for a weeks worth of shooting with the best kids in the country. Overall our team did pretty well. In Trap we placed 57th out of over 250 teams. In the other events the kids stayed in the top third of the pack. I was proud of their performance overall. We got lucky and had good weather for the days we were there. Some of the teams that were shooting later in the week were not so lucky getting held up by delays due to thunder storms.

Max and his cousin at Trine

We now had a week before or next planned summer activity which allowed for some time for a couple college visits. Max got to tour Trine and Central that week. I tried to fit in MSU but for some reason he wanted to be home and spend some time with his girl friend instead. So we both enjoyed some downtime at home. He still wants to visit a few more before making a decision and at this point really has no clue what he wants to do. For the moment he is thinking about being a Dr. or an engineer of some sort. Someone suggested biomedical engineering which has currently peeked his interest. Anyway we still hope to tour a few more schools he has not been to yet like Ferris, Western, Eastern and State.

Heading to Sandusky on the Tug

As if this month has not been packed enough we still had two more weeks in the month with more activities packed in. I don't think I've mentioned that I have the role of Cruising Fleet Captain for our local sailing club. Basically this means I'm responsible for setting up and organizing a number of events over the summer for our club to do by boat. Unfortunately I had already missed our clubs first two events while we moved the new boat to the Bahamas and then again while we were moving the boat to the Chesapeake. We had a week long cruise planned which was supposed to include a night on anchor (a rare event for our club) and visiting a few of the Lake Erie islands.

Dinner with the club on Middle Bass Island

The event went well and we enjoyed some time with friends we had not seen much this summer. Traditionally these events involve a little bit of sailing and a lot of eating, exploring and just hanging out. This summers was no different and we had a good turn out with 11 boats joining the group. Unfortunately our planned night on anchor got canceled due to weather so we headed to Put-in-Bay for a mooring ball one night, then headed over to Middle Bass for two nights. From there we visited downtown Sandusky where we got to see Annabelle (she is working at Cedar Point this summer as a lifeguard). Then went on to the city of Huron where the club stayed for two nights but we had to leave early to get back for our county fair. The club moved on without us to Kelly's Island and then everyone went their own ways with most heading back home. Everything with the boat was working well other then a exhaust leak I found right before we left. Luckily its easy to get to for a fix but is a pain in the rear to actually take everything apart to put a new gasket in as the leak is between the exhaust elbow and the turbo unit on the engine. We decided to ignore it for the week and deal with the mess later.

Max doing the Pack Goat competition at fair

We had to leave the summer cruise early to head back for barn setup and animal check in at our county fair. My wife and I have been 4H leaders for a number of years now and she was once again on the roster as the Goat Barn Leader for our 4H club. 4H is big in our area and was one of the bigger clubs at our kids previous school. Even though our kids don't go to the school anymore they both stayed active with the club and have shown goats for the last 8 years. If you have not experienced fair as a 4H member you will have an entirely different view of your county fairs. For the 4H kids fair is an opportunity to turn in the various projects they may have worked on during the year to have judged where prizes are given out and show/sell their animals. This is all a big commitment though the entire year with fair week being the peak. If kids are showing animals they are required to be there all week to take care of them ensuring the pens are clean every morning, during the day, and at night when the fair shuts down. Max is a Jr Superintendent which also means as one of the older kids he is responsible for the overall barn and ensuring the other kids are doing their chores and other fun things like early morning hay and straw pick ups, grand stand cleanups, turns working the cafeteria, and more. Fair is usually the first week of August and generally around the hottest time of the summer which always makes for a long exhausting but generally fun week. This year was no different. It was a long hot fun week hanging out with our 4H friends. Max is saying this may be his last year showing Shadow (his goat). I'm not sure if its because we packed to much stuff in this summer or if he is really ready to move on to something else but is a reminder that the kid is growing up and things are changing around our house.

Home for 3 weeks

Max wanted to get home to be at a friend's HS graduation so he flew home a day earlier than us. We followed the day after allowing for some time to prep the boat to be left and ensure the service team had a clear understanding of our list of items to get addressed. The Xquisite team was kind enough to drop us off airport and we made it home without any issues. We had enjoyed our brief stay but had to get back to real life. Amy still had skating stuff going on, my Scout Troop was getting ready for summer camp, and the HS Trap team that I coach had regionals coming up. Not to mention Max still had 3 weeks left in his Junior year of HS and we had a family wedding to attend before we could head back to the Bahamas to start using our new toy.

As usual we made the most of those three weeks. One weekend we took the Tug over to Put-in-Bay as they were doing tours of the Benson Ford house. Neat story this was a cargo ship that Henry Ford used to use from time to time and had fitted out rather nicely. Eventually it got sold and someone bought it cut it up keeping the bridge decks and sleep quarters then dropped it on their lot at Put-in-Bay turning it into a second home. When you go by the island it's hard to miss from the water and we never knew much about it. Turns out they open it up a few times a year for tours so we made the trek over to check it out. It's about what one would expect an old well appointed ship to look like. They have kept it remarkably the same as I'm sure it was back in the day. Frankly I'm not really sure about the practicality of living on it and having to haul all ones groceries up 2-3 flights of stairs or even just working on it to keep things running but its neat to see that someone enjoys it and still actively uses it. Another cool thing while we were there one of the locals that was volunteering as a tour guide of the home had just got back from space. Turns out he signed up for the Blue Origin

space flight program and had just completed his flight the week prior. It was pretty neat to hear about his experience.

The next week I took our Trap team to states. The kids shot really well earning the team 3rd place in the state and a couple of the kids even placed in the top 3 in other areas like skeet and sporting clays. Max got a personal best hitting 195/200 targets. We had a couple more Scout meetings. Max completed his Junior year and was now home calling himself a Senior (I'm just not ready for that), and then it was time for the family wedding. The wedding was a lot of fun. It was the smallest I've been to in a long time but after attending I'm not sure I would recommend it any other way. The couple did not have to spend all night saying hi to their guests, most the guests knew each other, and it seems like the couple got to actually enjoy their party! 

The next day we planned to fly back to Freeport to bring the boat back to the US. We really were doing it without much of a plan of where we might end up and unfortunately we were once again on a schedule to get it somewhere before we needed to be back for the next event which happened to be a wedding shower (another family wedding), States for our Trap team, and then a week of summer camp. What were we thinking buying a boat this year? Oh well I'm still looking forward to the adventure!

Look we can clean up reasonably well :)

Time to splash the tug

Yes it's always fun to think about a new boat and all the new adventures it can take you on. But we still have our 42 Nordic Tug that is scheduled to go in the water May 1. A couple weeks ago I brought all the cushins home to clean them as they have not been well cleaned since we bought the boat. I had grand plans that if I moved the boat to a marina closer to our house I would visit it more and work on several projects over the winter. Heck it was even in a heated storage unit which would allow me to do some much needed bottom paint and calking that needed to be completed. Unfortunately almost none of those plans came to fruition. I did get some new bolts put in the braces that hold up the swim platform and did get the hoist working again which should allow us to launch the dinghy. Last year we launched and played with the dinghy while at Toledo Yacht Club, lifted it up on to the boat and the hoist quit. We were able to loosen the four point straps we use to attach the hoist to the dinghy, to then lower it into the chalks but I had been stumped on what caused it and choose to ignore it for the remainder of the season.  Anyway it seems other than those two minor fixes I managed to ignore all the cleaning and other more minor projects on the list including bottom paint. Well it was now down to the wire. The boat is supposed to go in the water tomorrow and one can't very well bottom paint it in the water. 

I got to the boat and spent almost 12hrs sanding and painting without a break just to get the job done prior to splashing the boat the next day. Two years ago when I bottom painted I had decided to try an environmentally friendly paint that was really expensive. It worked really well the first season and not so great the second. However coverage only took one gallon and we were putting it on pretty thin by the end. This year I purchased the West Marine branded stuff thinking two gallons should get me two coats. Nope seems it's a lot thicker and the two gallons barely got one coat. Ugh!  Lesson learned next time I'm doing this job over three days instead of one. By the time I got home I could barely lift my arms and I was never so happy to have a chiropractor appointment scheduled for the next day. Oh well, I"m sure what I got on will last the season and with some light sanding next year I can get the two coats on pretty quickly or maybe better yet it will be the next owners job? As I'm writing this I'm remembering the new boat needs a bottom paint job and its twice as wide as this one and in another state.. Ugh :(

Watching them launch the Tug is a pretty neat process. I'm always amazed how tightly they can squeeze these big boats together in the storage barns. The pictures here sort of give you the idea but I can't walk between two boats in there without turning sideways. Anyway they show up with a little car similar or maybe the same as what they haul luggage to the planes with at the airport. Attach to it is a hydraulic trailer they can raise and lower at least four feet while controlling the front and rear heights independently. They slide the trailer under the boat. Raise up the pads, remove the blocks the boat is resting on in the barn, then just drive it out. The little blue car for lack of a better term moved our 40,000lb boat around with no problems. Of course the trailer tires did look like they were under quite a lot of pressure but everything else looked easy.

Once they had the boat out of the barn they hauled it the 1/4 of a mile to the travel lift where it was backed in and the lifting straps were put in place to do their work of holding the boat while they lowered the hydraulic's on the trailer and pulled it out from under the boat. Once that was taken care the lift driver drove it into the well lowered the boat until it was floating. I checked all the bilges to ensure water was not gushing into anything and that my bow thruster still worked. Everything checked out, I started it and enjoyed the 2 mile trip to our dock. Luckily all of this happened about the same time Max got out of school so he could meet me at the dock to catch lines helping to get the boat tied up. 

Now the real work begins. We need to get everything cleaned up, depersonalized, decluttered, and polished so we can start looking for its next care taker. It's been a great boat for us. Was a great boat for doing the loop in and I'm sure would be great for the trip we would like to do to Alaska one day but for now we need a boat that will circumnavigate and unfortunately our little tug is a bit small and limited on fuel capacity for that trip. I'm sure we will miss it. When we came back from the loop we had grand visions of checking out some of the Canadian canals, visiting the Thousand Islands area, spending time in the North Channel, doing the Down East Loop, and visiting Lake Superior. Unfortunately life and kids activities got in the way of all of that. Now that I'm over 50 I've really been thinking about my bucket list and I'm afraid of getting too old or simply loosing the desire for a few of the items like a circumnavigation. So I figure while I'm still healthy I should knock some of the big items off my list and can come back to the smaller ones when we are older. I wouldn't be surprised if we come back to another tug one day in the future. Its build quality, fuel efficiency, and overall design really do make it one of the best boats I've seen for cruising.

St. Ignace

We decided to stay in St Ignace for 3 days so we could do the bridge walk. This worked out well as the lake conditions were not that great the day we left Mackinaw Island and it was supposed to rain the next day.  The marina was really nice.  It was in town with good places to eat and the city had something planed for every night.  They were showing movies in the park one night, had a two day art fair, and fireworks another night.  We made our first friends on the dock that offered to take us to the grocery store.  Amy had provisioned to be able to feed us for about 3-4 weeks when we left but we were low on bread, milk, and of course the kids had eaten most of the chips, crackers, and other junk food by this point.  Needless to say we took the opportunity to restock a bit.  We had our first true off day where no one really wanted to do anything while it was raining so we watched movies and played a games together.

The bridge walk was a new experience for us.  I had heard about it, I had even ridden my bike over the bridge one year about 25years ago when I was still in collage. We found a kind soul on the dock who was willing to drive us up to the park where it starts at about 7am.  The Governor comes out gives a bit of a speech and then leads everyone (probably at least 1000 folks just on this side) across the bridge.  I had expected to to be cold but we got a pretty nice morning for it.  Once you get out on the bridge they have someone stationed about every 100 feet.  At first its bridge Maintance folks then it was State Police Officers.  I have no idea how they got that many to work on a holiday weekend unless they made all the ones in the training academy do it?  Anyway buy about the time your nearing the halfway point you can really start to feel the bridge sway.  They say it moves as much as 30ft side to side.  At the highest point we really looked like a group of drunken sailors out for a walk.  A few folks lost their balance fell down.  Because of the metal grating on the bridge we saw several they were cut up pretty badly from the fall.  We were lucky enough not to have any such accidents but it was a bit scary to look down though the grates to see the water so far below you.  Unfortunately this year because of CoVID they were not running the usual busing to bring folks back from Mackinaw City if you decided to walk all the way across it would mean we would need to catch a ferry over to Mackinaw Island then from there back to St. Ignace.  This was not going to be cheap for 4 of us.. So we elected to turn around at the halfway point and walk back.  I should note this was much to the disappointment of my daughter that was convinced she wanted to walk the fully 5 miles over the bridge, then 5 miles back, and 3 more back to the marina.  Once we got to the halfway point Amy did offer to keep going with her but she backed out opting to walk back with Max and I.  We appreciated the gesture :)

Once we got back we made breakfast and got the boat prepped to go.  The weather was good but the lake conditions under the bridge no so great.  It looked like we were supposed to have 4-6 foot waves for about 5 miles around the bridge.  Then things would level out to 2-3's rest the way.  If we did not leave Monday, it looked like we would be stuck in St Ignace for at least the next 2 days.  We really needed to start making some progress so we decided to go.  Sure enough the waves were big when we got out there.  I'm sure we saw a few that were 10 or more.  But like they predicted after about 5 miles we were down to 4's then about 20-30 miles after that the lake had calmed down to pretty consistent 3 foot swells.  We did a lot of rocking and rolling and were really happy to find an open dock in Petoskey for the night.

Ever since buying our first boat I had been wanting to bring it up to Mackinaw and say I took it under the bridge.  I'm not sure why but it was something I have wanted to do for over 13 years now.  We got close one time when we had the Beneteau up at the island a few years ago but for some reason I elected not to spend the 3 hours or so it would take to say I had crossed over into Lake Michigan.  I was pretty excited to go under the bridge that day so hardly noticed the huge waves breaking over our bow and it was a neat experience.  I really hope to have the time to do it again one day!  Hopefully a day with better conditions :). Plus how many folks can way they went over and under the bridge in the same day!

Mackinaw Island

 During our family planning sessions everyone voted that they wanted to stop by Mackinaw Island again (we had just been here in June with our exchange students).  We radioed in and were luck enough to get in for two nights right before the Labor Day weekend.  Its always fun being on the island.  We rented bikes.  Unfortunately the relatively flat loop around the island was mostly closed this time so we pedaled our way up the big hill to check on some of the stuff we had not seen in a few years like the Butterfly House, Carriage Museum, and Grand Hotel.  The kids got board at the Carriage Museum and decided to go back to the boat letting Amy and I take a slower pace enjoying other small stops along the way.  Before we left I sent Max a picture of the forge that was set up allowing tourists to craft their own knifes.  Of course by the time he saw this we had made our way to the bottom of the hill and was pretty excited to go back up and check it out.  Amy left us to head back to the boat.  I got another reminder of how out of shape I am now peddling up this hill for the 3rd time that day but Max was excited so that helped motivate me a bit.  Once there he decided to try the experience and pounded out his own knife from an old rail road spike.  Max has been bugging me for the last two years to build a forge with him at our house ever since earning his metal working badge at summer camp a couple years ago.  Not to mention that one of the older kids from his school is interested in this and has created a nice set up at home.

On our second day we met another couple on a custom tug that it turned out had been part of our sailing club many years ago.  They told us about their plans to do the bridge walk that weekend and we decided to stay and take advantage of the one day a year folks were allowed to walk the Mackinaw Bridge.  Overall it was nice to spend a couple of nice nights on the island.  The next day we planed to venture over to St. Ignace where we planned to stay until the bridge walk on Labor Day. 

Our Journey up Lake Huron

Our journey up Lake Huron was a quick one.  This was well traveled cruising ground for us as we had stopped in along most the ports along the way over the years.  I would have liked to have traveled into the thumb area to visit Bay City or Tawais but we will have to save those ports for another year.  We only ended up with one weather day in Harbor Beach.  We met another family doing the loop here with a son a year older then Max.  He was pretty excited to meet Max as he was the first kid doing the loop they had met since leaving from South Carolina.  Max being new to this I don't think yet appreciated how rare this opportunity might be along the way but we invited him over to play video games and even brought him into town with us to check out the new Jungle Cruise movie during a storm that was passing though.  

Most days we ran 50-60 miles a day taking us about a week to get to Mackinaw Island.  The kids found their own spots on the boat and I think Penelope was enjoying the constant attention she got from being in close proximity to her people and so far has yet to get sea sick.  In the past we have taken her with us on day trips and the occasional weekend trip to Put-in-Bay.  She never much liked the sail boat and really hated it when the boat healed.  So far she seems to be doing ok on the tug but still does not enjoy the rolly days on the water.

When we got to Presque Isle we decided to attempt anchoring for the first time with this boat/anchor.  Before leaving I had attempted to put our larger anchor on from the sail boat (a 85lb Mantis) but found the shank was to long to fit with our current set up so just ended up replacing the swivel with the Mantis one.  I'll keep an eye out as we go for marine consignment stores to see if I can find something else that might work along the way as our current 30lb anchor seems a bit light for our boat.  As soon as we got in Blake (Max's new found friend) was over saying hi on his families dingy.  We launched ours so the kids to could take Penelope in to shore for a walk.  This quickly turned into dingy racing and it was fun watching the boys have a good time on the water.  The evening was amazing at anchor but the night was pretty rolly. The wind shifted more than predicted which brought in waves off the lake making for a pretty uncomfortable night on the hook.  The good news is the Anchor did well.  It seemed to reset quickly as the boat shifted around but I think I would still feel more comfortable with something heavier.  All in all it was just your typical bad night on anchor, no big storms or anything exciting.  We had a lot of movement and a bad nights sleep.  With that we were up and out the next morning and on our way to the next stop.

Harrisville was nice but it seemed the cute little summer town was struggling a bit.  We ended up meeting our first looper that had just crossed their wake and another group that was working on a slow loop (3-5 year experence).  Unfortunately the kids were hungry and we didn't have much time to chat with them.  We wondered into town and found a pretty good place known for their broasted chicken.  The food was great.  While there we also ran into a few other couples from out dock as well.  One of which it turned out was celebrating his first book release that day.

Overall our trip up Lake Huron was great.  We had a really good weather window with calm seas.  We made good time and enjoyed each of our stops along the way.

Made it to Lake Huron

Today we left Metro Beach and started heading up the St Clair River to Lake Huron.  It was fairly uneventful until a storm came though and the fog rolled in making visibility a bit scary for an hour or two.  We had the chart plotter and radar to help get us though.  Luckily there were not many boats still out on the water during the storm so we just kept chugging along.  Seems I still need to learn how to use the radar as I could not figure out how to tune out the storm clouds over us to see the channel but I guess I'll work on that for another day.  Other then this the river was peaceful as ever and we enjoyed our trip under the Bluewater Bridge and made it into Lexington for the night.

And we're off like a screaming herd of turtles

 

We finally left the dock!  There were no parades or music playing when we left but we felt like it as we finally started this adventure we've been talking about for more then 20 years and planning for the better part of the last five.  Weather was nice and we went from Monroe Boat Club up the Detroit River and stoped at Metro Beach for the night.  The boat did a great job pushing itself up the river and we are looking forward to our next day and getting out on to Lake Huron!

This trip has been a long time coming and I'm really looking forward to getting to experience it with my family.  I'm sure we will run into some issues along the way and I know home schooling may be a challenge (especially if we have to educate both kids).  Even though we are still waiting on a placement for Annabelle which the company assures us will happen we figure worst case we will park the boat for a few days rent a car head home for a few days and send her off!  For now I'm excited that she is with us for at least this part of the journey!  For now our goal is to work our way around Michigan fairly quickly and then slow down to smell the roses after we get to Chicago.

False Start

 It's the day we were supposed to leave.  The plan was that Amy would get up early head to the grocery store for a really large provisioning trip we would head to the boat and start our trip north up the Detroit River to Lake St. Clair.  Well the grocery store took way longer then expected & everyone seemed to be dragging their feet a bit so we loaded the car up put everything on the boat and started finding places for it and decided we would just leave the next day.  Even though we had been dropping off car loads of stuff each day to the boat you can still see that the grocery run & final load was a big one that made it look like our main room exploded.  Amazingly enough we found spots for everything getting it safely stowed away.  We are excited to hang our flag out tomorrow once we begin our loop trip!

Almost time to leave

 We are now down to our last week before we leave.  I finally have most of the projects done we wanted to complete prior to leaving.  Then the scary discussion came up of should we delay.  Amy had been working on a lot of projects around the house and was no where near where she wanted to be & Annabelle still has not been placed with a host family in Sweden.  To me this was my worst nightmare.  We had been planning to leave in mid August back in April/May when we were doing our initial planning then in June Amy & I agreed to push it back until Annabelle was placed and Amy wanted to be around to help get her program started at the ice rink.  At this point we have two problems.  1.  I have heard you want to be off Lake Michigan by September if you can as the lake starts to become less predictable and one will have to stay in port for more weather days.  2.  We had signed up for the Great Loop Association meet up in Alabama on October 18th.  This meant we were now on a timeline to get the boat somewhere which is never good!  I have to admit I was terrified of this discussion and my initial reaction was no way can we move the date.  We needed to get the boat moving one way or another.  We had several discussions about Max and I possibly heading out and the girls meeting us somewhere along the way but ultimately decided the logistics of that would be painful and to just stick with our original date.  We decided so what if some stuff did not get done and told ourselves once again there is never a perfect time to go and we just needed to get out the door to start this adventure we had talked about for so long!.

We really didn't have time for a trip to Chicago the two days before we left but we did it anyway at the Exchange agencies urging to get Annabelle a visa.  I had filled out the form and read what was on the website but unfortunately did not pay enough attention and it turned out we needed a lot more paperwork then what we had and stuff like proof of insurance, where she was going to say, and a indentation letter to the country would all need to be supplied by the agency.  So we waisted a full day in the car about 10+ hours and $250 for a trip to Chicago only to be denied a Visa.  Hopefully we can try this again on our way around in the boat.  Oh well back to boat prep.

We invited family over to see the boat and wish us goodby.  None of our extended family had yet to see the boat.  Some were surprised how small it was but all were excited for us and wished us well for the journey ahead.

The kids are off to camp and the boat work begins

 

Our kids have been going to the same YMCA camp every summer for a week since they were both in 1st grade and its something they really seem to enjoy every year.  Unfortunately last year due to COVID the camp was closed.  This spring when sign ups came out they were excited to register but at the time we did not know for sure if we were going to do the Great Loop or not.  Usually we drop the kids off at camp and have a bit of a parents vacation.  Spend a week on the boat, sleep in, eat out and generally enjoy our time together and do all the stuff we enjoy doing that the kids want no part of.  Unfortunately this year because we only had about 3 weeks before we planned to leave for the Great Loop it meant we got to do a solid week of boat projects!  

After our shake down cruise we decided the boat came with just about everything we would need.  No additional fenders, lines or that kind of stuff would be needed.  We decided the freezer was a bit small and it would nice to be able to buy some frozen stuff to get meat in bulk when near a store vs having to walk to and from stores with this heavy stuff much more often.  So we purchased a small deep freezer.  While at the island for the week we found there were no public laundry facilities and when we did find something it meant a water taxi ride in and then a mile and a half hike to use someones washer drier.  We quickly decided that it would be worth the convince to have our own on board even if it would be much smaller then what we were used to at home.  The other thing I wanted was an AIS system.  We have had occasions where commercial traffic has reached out to us but did not know our boat name and would call out for the sail boat about a mile off of Marble Head or something to check our intended course.  I figured if we were going to spend this much time on the water I wanted them to know who I was and how to get a hold of me vs wondering which boat they were looking for.  Not to mention its also nice to see their name on the chart plotter as well should I want to call them when we get to the river system.    The chart plotter the boat came with was nice but was older and still used cartridges for the maps which seemed would require me finding a lot of older cartridges on eBay or the like to cover that area we would be causing in.  I decided to splurge and get a new Garmin Plotter that included maps of all the areas we would be traveling in along with their AIS system.  The last big thing was to figure out why the propane system was not working.

Most were not too involved.  Some were as easy as replacing a kitchen faucet (maybe a couple hours).  The biggest pain in the rear turned out to be installing the washer dryer unit.  The boat originally had come with a washer dryer that the previous owners decided to pull out and replace with a beer fridge and inverter to run it.  Note our boat does not have an inverter system that allows you to use the house bank while underway for outlets and what not, instead we have to run the generator.  I pulled out the beer fridge out and found a better spot to install the inverter and plugged the new freezer into the inverter.  I then started looking at how to plumb the washer in again.  Seems when they removed it they also filled in the drain hole.  I found the old spot and came pretty close to drilling it out exactly where it had been.  Borrowed a friends dingy in the marina and was able to caulk and install the new stainless barb fitting I had purchased.  Next up was the dryer vent.  This was a bit easier as it was up closer to the walk around deck.  Next problem became finding a vent hose long enough as the 8ft one I bought at Lowes turned out to be too short.  I ended up finding some HVAC tape and taped it together with another one I had left over from a previous install as the house.  Luckily some of the fresh water stuff was still in place so it meant I only had to run new hoses for the water hook ups.  Next came the problem of moving this 160lb beast.  I rounded up one of Annabelles friends from fair to help with this.  I will say its nice to have a cute teenage daughter living at home as that means there are almost always some strong teenage boys hanging around :).  We had measured everything and got luckily it all fit the first time with about two inches to spare.  After about 3 full days of working on this project we finally had the dumb thing hooked up.  Now I need to figure out a way to mount it to the floor so it does not move around while we are underway.

The chart plotter & AIS turned out to be pretty easy to install.  Though I still don't have the right sea talk adapters to get my auto pilot or depth finder to talk to the chart plotter but will leave that for another day as I never really trusted the auto pilot when engaged with the chart plotter for course directions and we have a separate depth display on that boat.  Turns out the trickiest part of this was finding the screen that allowed me to use the cameras installed on the boat.  FYI it only took about 3 hours and a lot of frustration chasing wires and power only to find out I was looking at the wrong menu.  The boat came with 3 working cameras all hooked up and working with the Raymarine stuff.  I knew when I switched to Garmin I would be limited to one camera unless I bought a $400 do dad to convert the analog cameras to an IP signal.  I figured as long as I had the rear camera I could see traffic behind me and if I really missed the side view cameras I would buy the do dad or upgrade the cameras to the wireless Garmin ones when we came home for the holidays.

Well we got most of the various projects done, we talked to the kids teachers, got their school books ordered, along with a bunch of other stuff.  It turned out to be a very productive week of prep work and was now time to pick the kids up from camp.  We decided to pick them up give them the night at home then head to Cedar Point in the morning for one more weekend trip in the sail boat before we had to winterize that and haul it out the next week. T-2 weeks till we leave.