We are docked right next to a fishing charter boat. I thought they would be noisily pulling out at 6:00AM, but at 7:00 they are still here. I think the captain was here at 5:00 preparing the boat. The wind still looks good for travel today, 8-10 knots NW now, and diminishing later. I think it's a 6 hour trip today. Actually, the wind looks good for travel the next several days.
I decided to go back to the convenience store before we leave today to buy beer for me and vodka for Kerry. It's the closest place to a marina to buy booze on our trip home. The beer prices turned out to be good, $17.99 for 24 cans, although an extra $.10 per can charge negated part of the savings.
The pictures for Photo Contest 9 are now posted.
We got off with no trouble at 8:45. We had a great downhill ride today. The winds were about 10 knots, from the NW, which made the waves treat Annie to a downhill sleigh ride. Very pleasant. We were both glad they were not beam sea waves. Annie did her usual wandering when hit with a few of the bigger waves.
Not a whole lot to see on today's trip which is mostly in open water. Last time there was a sailboat washed up on Middle Island. It was gone today, two years later.
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Middle Island Lighthouse
Buoy in mid lake marking a dangerous, submerged reef where you would not expect one to be.
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| Thunder Bay Lighthouse |
As forecast, the winds diminished to half of what they were when we started, to about 5 1/2 knots. The sleigh ride ended but the pleasant voyage continued. Occasionally a fly would get in the boat and terrorize us by biting our ankles until we could electrocute it with our electric fly swatters. With 4 flyswatters and two adults, we always win in the end! What would these stupid flies do if Annie was not out here to land on 10 miles from shore?
We pulled into Harrisville about 3:15, 5 1/2 hours after we left. The trip was 46.1 miles. Our average speed was 8.3 knots. We hit 15 knots briefly when I was blowing the carbon out of Annie's diesel, the first time I have done it on this trip. I didn't want to do it while I was towing the dinghy.
We like Harrisville Harbor a lot. It's clean, has nice facilities, has big wells for boats and is pretty. They had 5 dock attendants helping people with their boats today. I had three help me dock. (What did they know?) We were going to go downtown to the store Kerry likes, Precious Paws, but found out that it's open on Saturdays so went up on the top deck and had a rum and coke instead. Precious Paws is a resale shop whose profits go to the Human Society.
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| Captain and crew enjoying a rum and coke after a nice voyage. |
We had a take out pizza for dinner, from Harbortown Pizza. I took it out on a three wheel bike I borrowed from the marina. It was very good. The staff is rather grumpy and hard to deal with, but I guess the tasty pizza makes it all worthwhile. While we ate on the top deck we were serenaded by a concert in the adjacent park. It was a beautiful evening and setting. We were very happy to be here. Tomorrow there is a Farmer's Market in the adjacent park so we'll hit that for sure, along with Precious Paws, the dollar stores and the two hardware stores. The excellent grocery store in town closed two years ago.
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| The delicious pizza made dealing with the grumpy staff worthwhile. |
We're docked across from a Dufour 41' sailboat, called L'eau Rider from the Sarnia Yacht Club. We saw them in Gore Bay, followed them across the Mackinac Straits yesterday and followed them to Harrisville today. They and their boat got totally drenched yesterday in the storm and they were trying to dry everything out today. We stayed totally dry in Annie!
Our plans now are to stay here tomorrow and sail to Harbor Springs on Sunday. This gives us a day of rest and avoids the east (beam) seas forecast for tomorrow.
Peter and Marianna spent the day in Amendroz, one of their favorite anchorages. The Glaubermans from VYC zipped through to waive at them on their way to Hotham. Voyager will spend the weekend in Little Current.
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