Boyne City

We made it to Boyne City today; but it wasn’t easy.

I’ve always said that sailing is very manic. You get the highest highs and the lowest lows. I guess that’s part of the appeal to me. I love the highs and to fully appreciate them, you need to earn them by trudging through the lows. And this trip had it all.

When we left Winthrop Harbor on Friday, the conditions were perfect. The sun was out, the lake was flat, we were sailing on a beam reach. It’s want I call the magic carpet ride. Smooth, strong, and intoxicating. I fired up the BBQ grill and cooked burgers for dinner. A perfect evening.

At night time I like to reduce sail, and Friday night was no different. I changed course so we were on a broad reach, almost running. I brought in the Yankee and ran a full main only. Everything was perfect. I had the first evening watch and it was uneventful. Around 1AM Sue and Steven took over. About 2AM I was awoken by being thrown out of bed. A thunderstorm hit and high winds were pushing the boat over hard.

I ran to the cock pit and was able to wrestle the boat head to wind and relieve the pressure off the sail. I also started the engine to help power through the storm. I looked at the anemometer and the winds were blowing 40 knots. Not fun. And, this wasn’t a short storm. It seemed to last forever.

Around sun up the weather calmed down enough for me to get a few hours of sleep. Then came round 2.

We were just north of Ludington. I was using the phone to look at maps on AccuWeather and saw a line of squall after squall. A line in the sand had been drawn and no one was going to cross it. I fired up my radar and found a hole to squeeze through. I’ve done it before, and if it doesn’t work out, we get a little wet. And, I wasn’t going to get caught again in a storm with my full main up. This time I put in 2 reefs on the main and brought everything else in. I was ready for battle.

Needless to say, it didn’t work out as planed. All the orange suddenly became a single orange blog. This time I was reading 55 knot of winds. The double reef? I might as well have had a spinnaker up.

Again, I headed to wind and use the motor to try and keep everything going. The waves were big and the wave lengths were small. Waves were coming over the bow running across the deck and crashing into the dodger. I was worried the dodger would get blown out before the storm was over. We survived. I checked my phone for updated images, more storms were coming. The Coast Guard was on the radio warning that all of Lake Michigan had dangerous storms rolling across it.

We decided enough was enough and ran back to Ludington. I found a nice anchorage near the Badger car ferry on the Pierre Marquette river. I slept and had a proper meal. The storms had blown past and we were off again before sunset.

How were the condition for the rest of the sail? Boring. No wind so I had to motor the rest of the way here. You decide which was the high and the low.

It was nice to make it into Boyne City. One of my favorite stops on Lake Michigan. Why? The town is great and Shelia and her team do a wonderful job taking care of us. I much prefer this to Charlesvoix, which has become Lake Michigan’s own Ego Alley.