Since we returned from the cruise things have been slow with no sailing. The tooth they had to remove after I broke it completely off the root system is not healing real wekk so I have not felt much like sailing anyway.  It has been very hot and night sleeping is similar to the tropics and the days equal to or more temperature and humidity.  Summer has arrived finally but we think it will be short lived.

The spiders plugged up the diesel tank air vent again and I need to work on that before we stray to far from port.  Today we checked out a few new places to slip for next year – our marina is raising their fees again and we are being priced out.  That means spending time on the hook and renting a transient slip from time to time or finding a lower scale slip for the same projected cost which is nearly $2500 US.

We will keep you up to date on our experiments.

We arrived back from our Lake Michigan mini cruise 8/10/09 just before dark.  Since our internet connections were intermittant we did not try to keep up with blogging.  It was a time to decompress and we did a fine job accomplishing this task.  We wished we could stay out another week but family issues dictated 2 weeks only.

The first day out was a real adventure with winds and seas continuing to build we stopped after 5 hours at Grand Haven.  Eventually we found a slip because the seas were pounding our flotilla boats.  The days leading to crossing Lake Michigan were nice but not worth noting.  The actual crossing took 14 hours and covered 87 NM.  Winds were generally off the beam and lasted most of the trip between 15 -20kts.

Door County Wisconsin was nice but over rated as the quaint villages and towns did not have sufficient harbor space to accomodat all the craft and the bay can be treacherous at times.  People were OK but not as friendly as the north michigan people.  We were at Sturgeon Bay several days and Fish Creek as well.  High wind and seas dictated we return to Sutrgeon Bay for our re-crossing and this took only 8 hours to cover 50 NM – winds we OK but we motored to maintain 6 kts.

Several days were spend avoiding weather and going southward down the coast back to Saugatuck and these were the nicest days  of  the trip.  Here are some $$$ stats – Highest Sip fees at Grand Haven @ $83/day.  Lowest slip fees at Ludington @ $58/day.  Cheapest meals were made on board and the highest were in Frankfort at $120 for two.  We justified the night out as an anniversary present.   A day by day account is published on my other blog.