Saturday, June 21, 2025, Port Huron, MI

It was a beautiful cool night without the threat of rain (finally) so we slept with the windows and doors open. and a little breeze blowing through our cabin. So nice.

Making coffee is always the first task of every day. Today I added opening the bike bags to let out the moisture I knew would be in there from all the rain. (Shortly later, I had to close them again because of more rain.) Posting yesterday's blog came next. Again, it reminded me how thankful I am to have Starlink. There is no wifi in this marina and getting a cell phone signal to use a hotspot was always challenging. I'm also using our ice maker for the first time on this trip.

The water is low this year, very low. At the gas dock, I could hardly climb up off the boat to the dock. At our dock, we are way below the walkway. But the biggest indication are the dock poles themselves. I don't recall ever seeing the round pole at the bottom of the mail wood dock pole assembly. You can see where the water usually is in the picture below. I'll have to keep this in mind while while anchoring in the North Channel, as places previously available to us may no longer be.

It's a very pleasant temperature this morning. But the weatherman says this will end soon. It's forecast to be 91 today, then 96, 96 and 87 in the coming days. I'm sure this will limit our activities, and keep us in our air conditioned boats more than we would like. It was like that once before when we were here. 

Today I'll visit the hardware store. Our faucet has an annoying habit of dropping one drop of water on the wooden sink cover that Doug Gormley made for us. I'm hoping it's just the aerator gasket causing the problem as it appears to be damaged. The hardware store here is fabulous and even Kerry is excited to visit it. Other tasks I need to accomplish while here include arming our new inflatable life jackets and inspecting our port door screen which could be coming loose. Peter's and my favorite fried chicken store is also here, so a trip there is mandatory.

We walked with the Orros to downtown where they stopped for breakfast and we went on to the hardware store. I bought a new aerator and gasket. It did not solve my problem and actually made it a little worse, so I reinstalled the old one. Go figure. I haven't given up yet though.

Kerry made a new ditty bag for me. It's where I keep a slew of little tools with which I can fix most things that need attention. The old one is completely worn out after about 45-50 years of service. She made it when we had our 505 sailboat. I officially moved into the new one today. I can't force myself to part with the old one after so many years. Should I frame it?

Kerry and Marty have been writing a book about their family growing up. It's in Google Docs and nearly finished. We spent about an hour today trying to align pictures they way she wanted them. We got some arranged perfectly and utterly failed with others. We watched some Youtube videos about how to do it, but when we tried, unexplained changes occured to pictures and text that we were not even working with. Mega frustrating. 

Marianna was busy today coordinating reservations at Bayfield and setting us up with the ability to travel when the weather permits, knowing that we will have a place to dock when we arrive. Tuesday looks like the first good day at the moment.

We planned to have dinner at the Port Huron Yacht Club tonight. Before we left I decided to walk outside and take a picture of Annie in her dock. That's when I noticed that my fenders were over the top of the boat sides. The water was dropping. I had already lowered them once today. Not good.

My fear was that the sides of the boat  would go below the posts on the dock. If so, and if the water rose again, Annie would be stuck and potentially heavily damaged. This same thing happened to Lew Myers on Windchaser on Boblo Island. We had to get all the heavy women people to stand on the side to lower it enough that it could be freed. Look how close it was on Annie today. In the middle of our boat, I almost ran out of dock pole to rest the fender on as the sides of the boat were so low. 

I invited Peter over to consult on a solution. We decided to try and get a line on the windward dock pole which was very far away from Annie. Peter's solution was to fasten two dock poles together to try to get enough length to slip a line over it. It would have worked except that the rough top of the dock pole wood kept snagging the line. Finally a handsome young man on a jet ski came by and offered to help. He was able to grab the line from the river side and get it over the pole. Once the line was secured, we were able to pull Annie away from the dock. We were still concerned however, and decided to stay on Annie and not leave to go to dinner. 

While we were having dinner on  Annie, we watched the water rise about 1' (Yea!), then drop 14" (Boo!). The problem was caused by the very strong SW winds blowing the water to Canada. How could the water level change so quickly? Fortunately the winds are forecast to dinnish tonight and not be as strong tomorrow. I'll probably pop out once or twice tonight to check. Voyager has higher top sides so she was able to handle the fluctuations much better. 

We had planned to watch a movie before turning in,  but saw that the US had bombed Iran once we turned on the television. We watched the news until Trump spoke at 10:00 then turned in. While we watched, the water continued to rise and fall in increments over a foot. Amazing.