037 - Put-In-Bay’s Real Name Is Party Central

It doesn’t fit the “Don’t Give Up the Ship” history or its dangerous anchorage but it is clearly the place where Ohioans go to cut loose. The town’s main street is one bar next to another. Flyers were advertising pub crawls, festivals, dancing, all the festivities you’d expect for a party happening place. At night it was “free” music for us on the water, I guess it was setting the beat for the revelry ashore. And the ferries shuttle hordes to and from the mainland all day long, even into the first hours of the night. For those with a boat it is an easy ride from Sandusky, a great weekend “get away.” We were there on a Thursday and you felt the preparations for the coming throng. They even limit the use of automobiles; tourist can’t rent or bring one. Golf carts are for the tourist to get around the island. It’s all set up to cut loose.

We took this picture atop the Perry monument. The bay is completely open to the east, although it is excellent protection from the prevailing westerly. The charts indicate the area in the foreground is for anchoring, the upper part of the bay is a mooring field. What the charts don’t tell you is the anchorage is flat rock at about a 15ft depth with 2 to 3 ft of sawdust on top. In a moderate breeze your anchor will drag through the sawdust and skip off the continuous surface rock. The saw dust came from saw mills that worked the island 100 to 150 years ago from lumber floated down the Detroit River. Guess I would have designated a different spot for an anchorage and maybe even put a warning sign suggesting the moorings. It highlights the risk of new waters; these things just aren’t documented for you to do your “homework.”

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046 - Fog Bank a Comin

To all those who insist on paper charts as a backup to electronics, “what good are they in fog?” What was a surprise to us was the frequency of fog on the lakes, it wasn’t anticipated by us, seemed like a New England issue not a lake issue. But the water is cold (60s in the big water) and the air is warm which is perfect for dense fog. We learned at the shipwreck museum that a large percentage of ship wrecks on the Great Lakes are ships driving into other ships, mostly in dense fog. Radar, GPS, electronics charts and AIS should mostly preclude this cause of shipwrecks. We expected the number one cause for shipwrecks to be bad weather (think Edmond Fitgerald) but bad weather only accounted for ¼ of so of great lakes shipwrecks. With far better forecasting today, this too shouldn’t be an issue like it used to be. But back to our story, without radar, we played our fog horn, set a watch on the bow, watched the AIS for ships (we could see them ...

048 - Big Water

The Great Lakes are mislabeled, they are really inland seas. They are so big that one end can have very different weather than the other end or even the middle. Waves however don’t really care where they come from and can travel hundreds of miles, reflecting off hard coastlines. Shallow waters amplify the waves by making for a shorter period; this can create little waves that brings the boat to a complete stop as it goes up and down pounding against a wall of water. Similarly, one end of the lake may be experiencing 20+kts of wind and the other end could be in a dead calm with waves that originated from the other end. Makes it tough to know what the conditions are for your journey, so when its good take advantage of it, it will likely change.

051 - Med Style Anchoring – It’s so European

It’s complicated but it really lets you pack them in. Having done it now 3 times now, I hope I’m done with it. For us it’s complicated by the tender hanging off the stern and our stern anchor rode being 300 ft long in the bottom of a lazarette under a pile of other items. All the rode has to come out into the cockpit for attaching to a tree on the shore. It makes for a messy operation. Let’s see if I can explain. To anchor med style, you have to be able to backup well, which being a sailboat puts us at a distinct disadvantage (can you hear me saying powerboat would be better here too, but I won’t say it). You also ignore the winds as you will back into a parking spot between other boats anchoring the same way. You “simply” pick a spot, throw out the bow anchor in front of it, back into the slot and tie a rope to something substantial on the shore, and put out bumpers for your neighbors. That’s all you have to do. So we pick...

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