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.”

Comments

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.

049 - Currents

I admit the picture doesn’t show much, but this was 5.5kts underneath Peace Bridge near Port Huron. We were doing 1/2kt against the current. People on the shore were walking faster than us. It was impressive. I’m glad to be on Lake Huron where there are no currents. The lake does slosh around with wind but I can handle that, I really don’t want to fight 5.5kts of current again, it was taking the boat and tossing it all around like a cork. I was working the tiller harder than in a following sea. You can see a bit of an eddy in the lower right but you’ll have to trust me on this one. The dramatized blurry picture below shows the turbulence and terror of the experience. It also captures the Loch Huron monster in the middle left – it’s unexplained what that silver hump is. Yikes!

Our Voyage

Search This Blog