Monday, June 16th Yesterday, Helen left to go back to Boise, and Paul was joined by Joe Kindling, a college friend from Case Western Reserve days, who currently lives in Erie, PA, to aid in the remainder of the passage (approximately 600 miles) back to Waukegan, Illinois. Joe sails out of the Erie Yacht Club, so is familiar with Great Lakes seas and weather. Joe was initially a little reluctant about making the trip as he had recently had heart surgery, but once assured that there was a defibrillator on board, he said “let’s go.” Old Case jocks aren’t afraid of anything as long as they know there is a safety net!
We left St. Clair Shores, MI at 5:30 AM and headed NE across Lake St. Clair.
We had to go about 15 miles across Lake St. Clair to hit the mouth of the St. Clair River which would take us to Lake Huron. We hoped that by getting an early start, we wouldn’t meet any lake freighters on the river. The river carries all the water flowing from Lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron into Lake Erie. The river is fairly wide, but we still expected approximately 2 knots of current running against us. As we approached the entrance to the St. Clair River, our electronic charts, which we use for navigation, didn’t cover the river.
We had to quickly plot our position on a paper chart, and use it to navigate the river which meandered with many opportunities to take the wrong turn or to go aground. As we approached the headwater of the river as it reached Lake Huron, we came to a bridge at which point the river narrowed considerably to go under the bridge. We were told that the current coming under the bridge would be 6 – 7 knots, so we should try to go close to either the Canadian of the US end of the bridge, where the current would be less. Naturally, that’s where all the fisherman decided to anchor their boats to fish, so we had to go straight through the middle and fight to make ground against the current.
As we got into Lake Huron, the weather started to get nasty. Luckily, there was more rain than wind associated with this weather system.
We arrived at Salinac, MI around 5:30 PM. The docks at the marina were a little rickety, but it was a pretty little town with a nice restaurant at the marina, so we enjoyed our overnight stay.
