My goal to blog once a week is very hard to meet. Often, we sail most of the day and once at our marina or anchorage we are off exploring or launching into our evening activities that typically consist of boat maintenance, making dinner and playing card or boardgames. We also agree with the term ‘9:00 PM is a sailor’s midnight’! Being out in the fresh air all day wipes us out and we are often in bed early. This blog may be a bit rushed and shorter than my previous ones as we now have company on board and the days are now even busier! I also don’t know where to start as I feel there is so much to say since I last posted two weeks ago. I will just begin writing and see how it comes together.

I will start by saying that all is going fantastic as we hit the two-month mark of when we moved onto Starship! Boat projects continue and we now are able to lift the dinghy with the davits off of the arch and we have a working alternator! Wahoo!

I want to make mention of how much I appreciate the feedback I am getting from many readers as it is heartwarming to hear people say how much they love reading my blogs! For those who comment, I feel bad not replying to each and every one of you but with sketchy internet service and our long travel days lately, it’s not something I think I can keep up with at this point. Please know that we read all your comments and they always put a huge smile on our faces!

Today we are in Harbor Springs, MI. We all easily agree with the guide book’s description of it being one of the most elite harbours in the area. We are anchored off the beach just outside of the marina which is home to some incredible, massive yachts! The town is quite beautiful with its colonial style homes and very posh stores lining the streets. We got here two days ago and dropped anchor at midnight as we did a 91 nautical mile motor (15 hours) to push us as far as we could get into Lake Michigan. It really was a gorgeous night on the water! We ate dinner underway and when night fell, we enjoyed tea and hot chocolate under a full moon and star-y skies. We even saw the Starlink satellite internet constellation go over us which was pretty cool!

The wind direction is NOT very favourable these days. Lots of strong winds from the south and we need to go south. We need to get to Traverse City to drop off Matt and Candace by Thursday, September 6^th and the only weather window we can find is to leave at 11:00 tomorrow night to do a night sail that should get there just as the sun comes up. After arriving in anchorages at night twice now on this trip, I really do prefer daylight arrivals.

We met up with Matt and Candace in Gore Bay on Manitoulin Island and it was a wonderful spot for us to enjoy as we got the boat ‘company ready’. That night we got them settled in, enjoyed a chicken taco dinner and a game of Monopoly Empire (our lovely condensed version of the original). The next day we started them off with a fairly serious sail from Gore Bay back to Blind River and the did fantastic! The weather was rainy and down right miserable but spirits were high the entire time. Fortunately, we had a favourable wind direction that really helped and got us into Blind River by about three in the afternoon. The next day was another big travel day with lots of sunshine but even higher winds. Again, everyone onboard was hands on and happy to be there even when we got into big headwinds that had us tacking every ten minutes for a bit! Dylan was in his glory as he saw us heel over far enough to get the toe rails into the water. That kid is a fearless sailor that’s for sure.

I feel I am working backwards here in my timeline (or maybe even side ways) sorry about that!

The last time I blogged was after arriving in Batchawana on the west side of Sault Ste Marie (SSM). On August 21^st we went through our first set of locks as we made our way to Bondar Marina. Going through the locks was a fun and easy experience! That is encouraging as when we make our way down the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers later this fall, we will need to go though 26 sets of locks. It’s a good feeling to have the first experience under our belts so easily. We had the choice to do either the American or Canadian locks but knew that the Canadian side was much easier and recommended to recreational vessels. We were aware of the process but I had some nervous energy as we got into position. The guys helping us with the lines were fantastic and friendly! We did the locks along side two tourist boats and a happy little duck that confidently swam along beside us as though he was an integral part of the process. We were warned to have the deck and ourselves looking nice and tidy as there would be people watching and taking picture and videos. We chatted with a few of them who were thrilled to hear our sail plan and kindly wished us safe travels.

Very shortly after the locks, we were tied up nicely at Bondar Marina. Our three day stay there had it’s highs and lows. The highs included a dinner at Montana’s Restaurant, a movie night out, and wonderful long, hot showers. The lows included the many hours of frustration spent battling with our credit card company and online merchants as we tried to get food and other provisions delivered to the marina. We were in need of a big grocery shop to fill our almost empty cupboard, fridge and freezer. Surprisingly there were no grocery stores anywhere near the marina. Our troubles included; (1) our credit card billing address mysteriously being changed to a Thunder Bay address, (2) our orders being too big and (3) our credit card company flagging us for suspected fraud due to our multiple online orders. It was a nightmare but we finally succeeded and the day before we left, we welcomed onto the boat three big deliveries of essentials. That was another lesson learned for us. We were trying to save money by doing big restocks from familiar chain stores but we will need to shift more to using cash and doing smaller shops in person. We need to know that we are just going to have to manage with much less selection and go without some of the foods we are used to having.

It felt so good to be back on the water leaving Bondar Marina after being tied up to the dock for three days, but, this gets me to the part of the blog that I am embarrassed to write about. I did something really stupid. Our parents don’t even know about it yet so you are all hearing this for the first time. So again, in keeping my word to our Thunder Bay ‘fast friend’ Renee who asked me to write about the bad stuff too – here we go…

We had a near miss. We were on our way from SSM to Wilford Bay motoring along the St. Mary’s River. I was at the helm with the autopilot on as we made our way down the channel that got quite narrow at times (relatively speaking). All of a sudden, we were right on a massive red channel marker! I did not see it until it was midship and it was huge! I was standing and it was taller than I was so we figured it was at least seven feet high out of the water. It was metal and I wish I was exaggerating when I say we could’ve reached out and touched it as it went by. As the reality of the situation hit me, Dylan heard an array of profanities leave his mother’s mouth! I was literally swearing like a sailor. How could I have been so careless? I was distracted at the helm and I guess I now need to tell you what I was distracted with. Can you guess? It was my cell phone. I was downloading music from Spotify. I was (and still am) so mad at myself. Of course, I was very thankful we didn’t hit it but, boy, we got very lucky. We know that those markers also have a good portion under the water so I am not so sure it would’ve moved at all had we hit it. Oh, I didn’t mention our boat speed at the time – we were travelling at 7 knots as the current was in our favour as well. That is about the equivalent of going 14 km/hr! Would it have put a hole in our boat? Highly possible. Or it could’ve created a weak spot in the hull that may have caused us problems down the road. It also could’ve put serious cracks into our deck. We honestly don’t know what would’ve happened but we are sure it would’ve caused a very bad situation for us.

Here’s the thing, doing what we are doing there are so many factors that are out of our control that we are forced to deal with. In this scenario, I did have control to avoid this situation. It scared me terribly but I believe things often happen for a reason. I would like to believe that near miss was a slap in the face to me to smarten up and I know I now will be much more careful. Another tough learning lesson to tuck under my belt as we continue to push forward.

We are getting closer and closer to Dylan’s first day of boat school! Having guests on board, we have decided to start school after they leave. Dylan’s first day will be September 12^th. At the moment I am alone on the boat as the gang headed off to the farmer’s market and to do a hike. I needed this alone time to get this blog posted and spend a few hours getting some school prep work done – I have a ‘project management’ brain and I am very excited to take on my next project as Dylan’s teacher!

So as expected, Matt and Candace are melding into boat life nicely and are eager and excited for us to show them everything there is to know about sailing Starship. I can already see that it would be super to have them join us for a longer passage, hopefully from Nova Scotia across to the Azores Islands this coming June! Until then we will continue to enjoy their company, their extra hands on deck, light hearted sense of humour, and Matt’s excellent cooking!

Once we say good-bye, our focus shifts to making our way down Lake Michigan. Yesterday we made our booking with the company that will be shipping our mast. We are scheduled to take the mast down on September 26^th in Chicago. That will give us two and a half weeks to get there once Matt and Candace depart. Looking at maps, I see that we will need approximately seven full travel days to get down the lake. I think that should work out nicely to allow us to pick our weather windows should these annoying strong south winds continue into September.