North Channel Voyage - 2025 (Canada at last)
- kenyon sprague
- Oct 11
- 25 min read
Overview [by Jim]: Rick Ness had told us that the North Channel had been his father’s favorite place to travel in Perseverance, and in his previous boats. Checking the ship’s log, I found that the last time Perseverance traveled to those famed cruising waters in northern Lake Huron was in 2005. Lori and I have long intended to try that trip but had always lacked both the skill and the time. When Lori read that the Great Lakes Cruising Club (GLCC) was holding their annual “rendezvous” in Little Current, Ontario this year, we decided to pull the trigger.
We informed our kids of our plans, and all agreed to join us for parts of the voyage. Although the 49’ Perseverance is a big boat (theoretically capable of providing sleeping space for up to 8 persons), 6 people on-board for extended cruising can be challenging. It’s easier in a nice harbor where you can get off and go places, but while underway, it’s pretty easy for even amicable people to start acting a bit anti-social. Is this a good idea?
We did it anyway. Below is the Great Lakes region, with the yellow rectangle encompassing the region of our travels this year. Within the rectangular enlargement is shown in yellow our outbound track, in orange is our return trip. Each dashed arrow represents one day’s worth of travel, the longest was 110 nautical miles (127 statute miles)
The trip was nominally 2 weeks, in which our crew varied from 4 to 6 to 4 to 2. Perseverance traveled 513 total nautical miles at a stately average speed of just over 7 knots, which translates to about 72 hours of diesel running time while underway. Notable failures for this trip included losing the bow thruster (described in detail), the Navionics system became unresponsive 3x (required rebooting), a brief AIS outage (resolved by waiting a day), and also the inevitable seasonal injury to myself (described in detail).
Our augmented trip log follows:
People:
Lori and Jim Sprague: (Skipper and Engineer/Deckhand, respectively, from Dexter, MI)
Davi and Lauren Sprague: (our youngest offspring and wife, from Hancock, MI)
Kent and Hannah Sprague: (our oldest and wife, from Manhattan)
Quang Le: (our “robotic pandemic kid,” from Cleveland)
Roy and Rick Ness: (builder of Perseverance (deceased) and youngest son, respectively)
Percy: (the fictional and semi-anthropomorphized sentient embodiment of the boat)
Preamble
July 4 [Jim, Lori, Quang, Lauren, Davi]
Escanaba (15:23)-Gladstone (16:10), 7 nm
Gladstone (23:02)-Escanaba (23:56), 7 nm.
Notes [by Percy]: I towed the dinghy and we anchored out about a quarter mile offshore of the Gladstone beach in order to watch the fireworks. It was fairly “sporty” out with 18 knot winds and whitecaps. We used my new bridle system off the bow, and its 3 pass Prussik knot gripped the three-strand anchor rode tenaciously, as desired. I still swung a lot, but only about plus/minus 40 degrees, compared to the nearly plus/minus 90 degrees we had experienced last year without a bridle.
Quang and Jim were the only ones brave enough to jump off my stern and swim a lap around me. The water sucked enough heat out of Quang’s thin frame that he had to immediately take a nap after clambering back aboard. Jim fired up the “new” Evinrude and took Davi and Lauren to the Gladstone harbor where they located caramel corn, and Jim watched the women’s log-rolling sprints competition. The dinghy surprisingly got on a plane easily with 3 people aboard on the way out, but the prop was too fouled with lake weed to do it on the return trip. Jim thinks the Evinrude has got just a tick more power than the cursed Johnson that it replaced. Jim fired up the grill to cook some nice brats and enjoyed a very nice fireworks display, marred only by Gladstone’s curious decision (tradition?) to opt out of the “grand finale.” Nobody was quite sure when it was over, so I didn’t get to sound my horn at the end.
More Preamble
July 5 [Jim, Lori, Quang, Lauren, Davi, Kent, Hannah]
Escanaba, 0 nm
Notes [by Percy]: Still suspicious after years of being humbled and humiliated by the 2-stroke outboard, Jim performed even more dinghy testing… maybe it’s actually all good now? Kent and Hannah flew in from Manhattan just in time for Lori’s birthday cake and no Escanaba fireworks due to the rain.
More Preamble
July 6 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah]
Escanaba, 0 nm
Notes [by Percy]: All the Subarus left. Davi and Lauren returned to Hancock in the silver one, vowing to see us in a few days to join the Canadian expedition. Quang fired up the white one and returned to testing brakes in Cleveland. Kent and Lori worked on updating navionics software with promising results. Jim was especially pleased when Kent informed him that RayMarine had finally updated their software with a GPS enabled anchor alarm, supposedly capable of alerting whoever is on watch when the anchor starts dragging should the wind change or pick up. More dinghy testing by Jim.
The Real Trip Starts (with a failure)
July 7 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah]
Escanaba (13:50)-Jackson Harbor/Washington Island (17:20), 23 nm
Notes [by Jim]: The crew motored over to the Escanaba fuel dock and nearly filled the mighty tanks of the Sprague Strategic Oil Reserve aboard Perseverance. We usually only buy fuel on even years, but the Canadian trip was going to be long, and the boat handles heavy seas better when she’s got her keel a bit deeper in the water. At 450 gallons port and 515 gallons starboard, Perseverance was fairly balanced in roll and was at 88% of her full fuel capacity. We probably won’t need to fuel her again till 2027. We also topped off the huge potable water tanks and slowly pumped out the four separate waste tanks. Lori complained that the bow thruster did not seem to be as responsive as she expected, but had no trouble spinning the boat 180 degrees in calm waters at the fuel dock to get the port-side fuel tank near the pump using rudder-directed stern thrust.
The crossing to Washington Island (part of Wisconsin’s beautiful Door County) was calm and pleasant. Lori cautiously approached Jackson Harbor, keeping a sharp lookout for her local nemesis, The Karfi. On her first trip to Jackson Harbor 5 years ago, she had been surprised by the ferry (like the Perseverance, also built in Escanaba) that travels from Washington Island to Rock island on the hour. On that occasion, she first saw the Karfi just after committing to the narrow channel entering the harbor. The Karfi, much wider and faster than our boat, was hogging most of the channel. Lori chickened out and gave the Karfi too much space, scraping our keel on the rocks near the starboard daymarker. This time she timed her arrival for just after the Karfi’s 5:00 run and had the channel all to herself.
Unfortunately, the bow thruster didn’t respond once she began the careful process of yawing 90 degrees while at a full stop near our dock and getting blown by the wind. There was nobody around to throw lines to, so it was all up to Lori to get us close enough to snag a piling. With her single screw, Perseverance has limited ability to spin in place, but with several applications of forward thrust with full rudder followed by immediate reversing, Lori got the job done and nobody got hurt. But she was decidedly not happy about it.
After tying up, I (-once again-) engaged the failure analysis process to try to figure out what was borked and what we might be able to do about it. This was kind of a big deal since we were about to visit a ton of new harbors we knew nothing about, and were almost guaranteed to need to deal with some unfavorable winds, currents etcetera. Degraded maneuverability was NOT something we wished to deal with for the next two weeks. My first pass found no leaking hydraulics, no obvious smoke, sparks, weird noises anywhere. Restarting the engine to regain hydraulic pressure, I thought to check all the other hydraulic systems running off of the diesel’s crank mounted pump. To complete the check, I had to take the 5-gallon bucket off of the capstan on the fore deck that we occasionally use to haul up the anchor. Unthinkingly, I had placed the empty bucket there to get it out of the way before leaving Escanaba. To my surprise, the capstan was already happily spinning, its switch having been depressed by the snug fitting bucket. I then realized that I had inadvertently engaged the capstan 4 hours ago, and it had been silently and invisibly spinning for 23 miles under the bucket where nobody could see it spin, but where it then sucked up all the pump’s hydraulic flow, leaving no remaining hydraulic oil to power the bow thruster. Failure Analyzed: problem (as usual) was between my ears.
Happily, we had arrived just in time for the local (and only) restaurant to serve us a nice meal and the four of us had some good Wisconsin beer.
The Return to Beaver Island
July 8 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah]
Jackson Harbor/Washington Island (5:49)-Beaver Island (15:05), 67 nm
Notes [by Lori]: We were up pretty early to get us underway for the long passage to Beaver Island, the largest island in Lake Michigan. The crossing was smooth and uneventful. Once I docked (making gratuitous use of the bow thruster, just because I now can), Hannah volunteered to help Jim grease the shaft log (fun times!) and they both later went swimming at the nice town beach. Hannah and Kent made delicious crunchwraps for dinner before a quiet evening and early bed. See last year’s entry about Beaver Island for further information about Beaver Island’s interesting history involving pirates and Mormon Kings.
Under the Mighty Mackinac
July 9 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah]
Beaver Island (8:55)-St. Ignace (14:22), 39 nm
Notes [by Lori]: Today’s jaunt was not as long, and again went smoothly. We docked at the nice municipal marina in St. Ignace (on the north end of the bridge) and sent Kent and Hannah off to take Shepler’s ferry over to Mackinaw Island for dinner since Hannah had never been. Jim and Lori learned that their friends from Ann Arbor, the Jaskiewicz family, were driving through town and met them for dinner at a restaurant. Kent & Hannah brought back fudge and a nice book “Know Your Ships,” that we’ve used extensively as we meet and pass the giant lakers and government ships of the Great Lakes.
We take on more crew
July 10 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah]
St. Ignace (10:10)-DeTour Village (15:39), 38 nm
Notes [by Lori]: Another 7-hours underway got us to DeTour Village, the easternmost point of the Upper Peninsula. The state marina there was nice and modern, but there is not much to the town. Immediately across from our port was the industrial side of Drummond Island, where they mine calcite from Michigan’s 2nd largest island (after Isle Royale). Davi and Lauren showed up in their Subaru after we docked, and for entertainment, we watched the giant freighters silently gliding by going both north and south making copious use of our new freighter ID book. Davi loaded their matched pair of heavy e-bikes onboard to complement the two folding Chinesium bikes we keep onboard (gifted by Jim’s folks), parked the Subaru where the state employees wanted us to leave it, and we all prepared to flee the country.
Into Canada!
July 11 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah, Davi, Lauren]
DeTour Village (10:15)-Meldrum Harbor (15:47), 39 nm
Notes [by Lori]: I chose a route hugging the north coast of Drummond Island, well south of the Canadian mainland and decided to clear customs at one of the smaller ports, figuring its remoteness might discourage officials from wasting too much time on us. We docked in accordance with all the scary regulations, taking care that none of us save the captain (me) set foot on Canadian soil. I used the provided landline at the marina office to present all of our enhanced driver’s licenses (4 from Michigan, 2 from New York), which worked like a charm… no passports required.
I noticed a lone sailor near us tied up at the detention dock who had managed to do something to irritate the Canadian customs officials, and was sullenly sitting under his boom waiting for his time-out session to expire. More happily, I spotted our friends Missy and Amy in their beautiful motor yacht Soñador one dock over. We ate all meals aboard, sharing the cooking and cleanup duties fairly successfully.
More Canadian Cruising, some weather
July 12 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah, Davi, Lauren]
Meldrum Bay(9:40)-Gore Bay (14:00), 32 nm
Notes [by Percy]: We said goodbye to Missy and Amy as they were planning on zipping well ahead of us in their much faster boat. Weather changed their plans though, and we all ended up in Gore Bay, a somewhat larger port with a few businesses around and things to walk to, which we did despite it being a bit rainy. The ship store had excellent smoked whitefish dip. We ended up having a piecemeal dinner at a Brewpub equipped with a Jamaican food truck. We shared a couple tables with all 6 of us plus Missy, Amy and their pooch Teak. For desert, we bought “artisanal” fudgsicles.
Arrival at our Canadian Destination
July 13 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah, Davi, Lauren]
Gore Bay (8:30)-Little Current (12:00), 25 nm
Notes [by Lori]: Our final leg outbound was a brief jaunt, but it had some tricky navigation involved. By this time, much of the GLCC fleet was converging on our destination, so for the first time, we were actually seeing some traffic on the water. We were in a column of a half-dozen or so boats spread out over about a mile that were all threading the red and green buoys marking the narrow, shallow and twisty Clapperton Passage. I slowed to 6 knots for it and was doing pretty well with all the course corrections until a boat with more engine than politeness passed me (on the right!) as I was meeting an oncoming sailboat at a jog in the passage. Fortunately, nobody touched any rocks and all I got was a little miffed.
We pulled into Little Current harbor just before noon, between rain showers and in the middle of massive boat arrivals from both the east and the west. The marina personnel were harried but still efficiently working through the backlog of making slip assignments. We stood off from the docks as requested by the radio, all hands at the ready to make fast quickly to whatever we could in anticipation (fear) of the famously random water currents. The Little (understatement!) Current is caused by the ever-changing winds pushing the water through a rather narrow passage. Eventually, I got the call over the VHF to thread my way between two long docks and tie up at the wall between them. Happy to have the bow thruster back, I completed the maneuver despite Jim not having gotten the message (he couldn’t hear the radio from where he was stationed) that I was shooting for the wall rather than one of the finger docks; he was a bit freaked out for a minute. It was the perfect spot for the Perseverance, so we were happy.
We registered with the nice GLCC folk and met some new folks along with some previous friends.
We offloaded all the e-bikes and the dinghy with our painfully loud davits (before everything quieted down) and everyone went out independently to explore the area.
1st offloading of crew
July 14 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah, Davi, Lauren]
Little Current, 0 nm
Notes [by Lori]: Little Current, Ontario is located toward the eastern end of Manitoulin Island which, in case you didn’t know, is the world’s largest freshwater island. Maybe you figured that out since we have been cruising its coast for three days now, and there’s much more we won’t see on this trip. With a population of around 1200, Little Current is the metropolis on Manitoulin. The waterfront district is well populated with restaurants and shops selling clothing and local crafts. Further up the hill you will find grocery and hardware stores, a hospital (which we were somewhat surprised to have not needed to visit), and Manitoulin Brewing Company where you can sample Haw Eater’s Brew, Swing Bridge Blonde, Endless Summer (a local surfing beer) and much more. The Little Current Swing bridge is an icon of Manitoulin. Built in 1913 as a rail bridge, it is the only way to reach the island by land. As automobiles became more common, the bridge was used by both trains and cars from 1946 until trains were discontinued in 1963. These days it is a single lane for cars and trucks plus a narrow pedestrian walkway. All traffic must halt on the hour as the bridge swings open for boat traffic.
Kent and Hannah planned to return to NYC via the Sudbury airport, about 80 miles north of Little Current. They are real experts at multi-modal municipal transportation but they had to work for it this time. Very quickly it became apparent that Uber was not going to be an option. Crossing their fingers they phoned the local taxi service and hoped for the best. “Of course, we take people to the airport all the time,” said the islander who answered the phone. “That’ll be $250 Canadian. I’ll pick you up in front of the post office at 11:00.”
After hanging up Kent said, “It’s going to be an old Lincoln Town Car…or maybe a mini-van.” It was the latter, a 2000’s vintage, maroon Chrysler Pacifica with a few battle scars. Amazingly, the automatic sliding door actually opened, revealing…a chain saw right behind the driver’s seat. “Oh, let me move that for you,” said the driver as he hopped out and tossed the chainsaw between the back seats. The guy seemed pleasant enough, but was he maybe a serial murderer? I didn’t have much time to process these thoughts as my first-born and his wife loaded their bags and climbed into the back seat. “Call me when you get to Sudbury,” I said. Figuring if I didn’t get proof of life in a couple hours I’d call OPP (Ontario Provincial Police.)
As I was finishing up lunch, I got Hannah’s electronic review on the cab ride:
“Made it to the Sudbury Airport with zero drama and a Tim Horton’s stop along the way. We had a great time talking to the driver–he grew up around here and had fun stories, including one about shooting bears from his porch while in his underwear. 10/10 experience.”
I guess the guy wasn’t a chainsaw murderer after all.
Two days later, we were informed that the single road to Sudbury had washed out in a rainstorm, it took them about a full day to get it passable again. That probably would have meant a missed flight had schedules been a bit different. Folks on the island have to be prepared for anything. I suppose the chainsaw might just be standard taxi equipment on Manitoulin.
Canadian Escapades
July 14 [Jim, Lori, Kent, Hannah, Davi, Lauren]
Little Current, 0 nm
Notes: [by Lori]: At dinner last night we were accosted by Debi, the very chipper organizer of the whole event. She was trying to recruit sailors for the Pico (tiny sailboat) races the following day. She still needed a crew to represent Lake Michigan. Feeling a bit sorry for Debi because I had been the not so chipper organizer last year, I immediately volunteered Jim. Missy, in a master stroke of self-preservation, said that Amy would be happy to partner with him.
We arrived at the beach and immediately realized several things:
The Picos had jibs. Though a decent small boat sailor in his distant youth, Jim had never sailed a boat with more than one sail.
Missy, not Amy, was the experienced sailor in that couple.
The likelihood of ending up in the water was high and…
It costs $30 to rearm Jim’s inflatable lifejacket if it’s deployed.
Missy and I reasoned that Jim and Amy were both engineers and they’d figure it out. I don’t know what was said aboard the boat but watching the action, or lack thereof, was excruciating. To say they struggled would be kind but after several unsuccessful tacks the intrepid crew managed to point the little boat in the right direction to round the first marker. It went somewhat better after that but they were not in the first wave of finishers. Nonetheless they managed to hit all the marks eventually without capsizing the boat so we are calling it a win. [I will admit to a certain amount of humiliation during that sailing outing, but was impressed with Amy’s ability to keep her cool after I contributed to her getting clocked in the noggin by the boom a couple times. The Pico is a fine little training boat, but was a bit tight and tricky for two rusty adult sailors. Having said that, we had zero accidental jibes, got our rhythm down in reasonable time despite some sporty wind conditions, and didn’t even come close to capsizing.]
More Canadian Escapades
July 15 [Jim, Lori, Davi, Lauren]
Little Current, 0 nm
Notes [by Lori]: Morning came early with barking dogs, shouting, louder dogs and a woman’s scream, culminating in sounds of rending metal. Once our sleepy brains processed that these were not normal morning noises, we got up and saw the cockpit area of a 45 foot sailboat seriously tangled with the anchor and pulpit on the bow of a large trawler. They were at the end of the dock adjacent to us, right next to Amy and Missy’s boat. Later, we found out that the sailboat got caught by the strong and utterly unpredictable current that famously slings through the narrow channel at Little Current.
Later that morning we found ourselves boarding a school bus on our way to the interior of the island. Our first stop was a park on the lakeshore, from where we commenced an uphill hike to see an archaeological site situated on a series of stairstepped bluffs created by the receding lake water. The higher you go, the older the site. Our two guides were students in their 20s. One was a sturdy looking guy with a mountain-man vibe, the other a young woman who was decidedly not athletic. The age of the boaters in the tour group was easily 60+. The boaters on the tour had not really been properly briefed about the somewhat rough and strenuous trail but we all forged ahead gamely. Though some hikers may have wished for different footwear, frequent stops to point out items of interest kept us from tuckering out. By the time we got to the third of four stops, our female guide was gasping for breath and sweating profusely. “Well,” she said when she could finally speak, “the people on the earlier tour really had trouble making it the rest of the way. Maybe we should stop here.” So, we didn’t get to the oldest spot which was a quarry and probably the most interesting part. In hindsight we realized we should have demanded the male guide take us the rest of the way but I guess we were all too polite to speak up.
Back on the school bus, we headed for another tour site, a winery overlooking a different lake. The last half mile was a narrow, rocky lane that went down, down, down. In some places it was barely wide enough for the bus to squeeze by. Leaves, sticks, whole branches poked through the open windows. We wondered how we’d ever get out. Fortunately, there was a nice clearing between the woods and the vineyard. We had not signed up for the winery tour but everyone else got off the bus so we did too. I was immediately glad we got off because the bus driver dropped a back wheel into a hole trying to turn around. He was able to rock it out of its precarious position and lurch up the hill but we were just as happy we weren’t sitting in the back seat during that operation. The bus drove off without us so we made the most of the situation and strolled through the vineyard with the very personable farmer, a retired science teacher. We learned a lot about the difficulties of farming a rocky Canadian island and quite a bit about winemaking using sheep and hogs for weed control. We washed all that learning down with generous samples of local wine which was quite good. As we boarded the bus that took us up, up, up the narrow, rocky lane we were quite thankful not to be facing that ride entirely sober. Note: the bus driver was REALLY skilled.
High Society Outing
July 16 [Jim, Lori, Davi, Lauren]
Little Current, 0 nm
Notes [by Jim]: This was the evening of the fancy Commodore’s dinner for all the boaters visiting Manitoulin Island. We decided to dress up for it ‘cause, what the heck, we’ve got spacious hanging lockers and we keep a boat suit and cocktail dress on board for just such emergencies. My boat suit was purchased several years back when I unexpectedly got called to trial in Bay City which is smack in-between our boat in Escanaba and our home in Dexter, more than 3 hours away from each. Thinking quickly, Lori steered me into the local St. Vinnie’s thrift store where she paid $7 for a deceased Methodist’s 2nd best suit that fit me passably well. Locally sourced shoes, belt, tie and a new white shirt completed my ensemble. I recall Lori slightly slowing at the courthouse as she shoved me out of the car while muttering vague promises of maybe fetching me the next day before speeding off towards home.
I think I did fairly well on the witness stand and was dressed approximately as well as the Department of Justice lawyers that had hired me. Anyhow... the point of the above digression was to explain why Lori laughed so hard at me before dinner while we were waiting for the chartered school bus to drive us the 3 miles to the local rec center. I was simply leaning up against a post chatting when she noticed that I still had a $7 price tag hanging from my suit coat’s left armpit. She commented that it was lucky that I only had to raise my right hand when I was sworn in at trial. The dinner was fine, we got to talk to a bunch of nice people, Lori won the door prize and Davi even met us at the bus with much appreciated umbrellas once the bus finally delivered us back to the marina.
Rain Date
July 17 [Jim, Lori, Davi, Lauren]
Little Current, 0 nm
Notes [by Jim]: Very rainy day. We decided to delay our departure. Amy strolled by and invited me to go with her to attend “Roy’s Broadcast.” So, who’s Roy? For the last 20-some years, Roy Eaton has run a local broadcast from Little Current, Ontario every day of July and August at 9am on VHF Channel 71. The broadcast is called LCYC Cruiser's Net and caters to the local and transient boaters that ply the waters of Lake Huron’s north channel. Roy, a retired local school teacher and principal, relays messages, reads news, checks status of boats, connects people and relates a history lesson or two. It was fun to watch him professionally run through his show, Amy serving as scribe for noting boat locations. I asked him after his broadcast if he recalled seeing Perseverance, and when I showed him a picture, he thought that he did. He didn’t recall Roy Ness, but thought the lines and paint were familiar, and he asked me to join his show tomorrow and be interviewed. I (reportedly) did a good job buying coffee, and then asked Lori to withdraw some money so I could get a haircut. The barber in the basement of the Anchor Inn was of the Canadian First Peoples, and gave me the most extraordinary haircut of my life. It involved a lot of hot towels, lotions, and massage... I’m still not quite recovered from it. I gave her a tip that raised Lori’s eyebrows, but I simply responded by raising my own, perfectly coiffed, eyebrows. [Jim had so much cologne on him that I kept turning around to see what stranger was following me.]
Begin the retreat - and anchoring out
July 18 [Jim, Lori, Davi, Lauren]
Little Current (10:12)-Kagawong (12:50), 16 nm
Kagawong (16:38)-Clapperton Island (17:50), 7 nm
Notes [by Jim]: Lori and I started the day by joining Roy’s morning broadcast. Roy gave me a microphone and started interviewing me about Perseverance until he figured out that I wasn’t actually the skipper. He perfunctorily ejected me from the interview chair and finished up the show with Lori, who related how I had broken her bow thruster a few days ago.
Mid morning, we said our goodbyes and carefully exited our berth with a keen eye on the buoys to gauge the instantaneous current. Lori made a decision while underway to stop at Kagawong, a smallish port a bit to our west on Manitoulin Island, which turned out to be a good call. Lori backed into the slip assigned to us over the VHF radio, another first, and she made it look good. The harbor master was very talkative and helpful, giving us great suggestions while trying to get his young nephew trained up on the docking duties.
We took a nice hike up the hill to see Bridal Veil Falls, visited a church with a pulpit made from a tragically lost classic Chris Craft and spent some time in the local museum. Apparently Kagawong was a favorite remote stomping ground for Detroit’s elite back in the 1930’s, and one of the heirs to the Dodge dynasty met a bad end after allegedly playing with dynamite, being rushed to a hospital by boat and somehow falling overboard. Danny Dodge’s new bride was suspected of foul play, and the Dodge family unsuccessfully contested her inheritance of Danny’s fortune.
We hiked to a local restaurant for lunch, and then departed for what we hoped would be a likely anchoring spot just to the north. Clapperton Island, just off the tricky Clapperton passage, had a well protected bay with just one other boat present. After fishing around for a while, we decided on a spot, dropped the anchor in about 12 feet, and set up our new anchor alarm. We didn’t get the alarm set up perfectly (had a couple newbie mistakes), but we got it close and were pleased with the performance. The new Nav system notes the location of the boat’s GPS antenna and plots it a few times every minute so you can see if the boat is swinging wildly and/or whether we’re dragging anchor. If the boat gets outside a defined circle, it yells (but not loudly). Since it was our first time using the system, even though it was fairly calm, we set watches for the night. Davi and Lauren were not expecting this duty, but they pitched in, and the boat was still anchored fine in the morning, though we did experience several brief gusty periods overnight.
Return to the U.S. of A.
July 19 [Jim, Lori, Davi, Lauren]
Clapperton Island (7:08)-DeTour Village (17:53), 77 nm
Notes [by Jim]: This was a good long run back into U.S. waters. We had to dodge a lot of gill nets, but otherwise the cruising was straightforward. The boat and the navigation system all worked great. We pulled back into DeTour Village just near the end of shift for the State employees, but we still managed a successful, urgently needed pump-out. Lori dealt with the US Customs and Border Patrol using the ROAM app… this required all four of us to be interviewed by the agent on video… my interview was performed while I was in the engine room heaving on valves to get the holding tanks emptied.
We easily got into the slip directly across from the service dock. Being a calm evening, and us being tired and hungry, we tied up with a bow and stern line, neglecting to deploy our two spring lines. Davi made us all pizza and we played a final game of MahJong before bed. Overnight, a strong north wind kicked up causing the two dock lines to start singing. Lori got me up at 3am to jump the 5-foot gap that the wind had opened up between the boat and the dock to reset the dock lines so she could sleep in peace.
2nd offloading of crew
July 20 [Jim, Lori]
DeTour Village (10:55)-Straits Harbor (Mackinaw City) (16:41), 40 nm
Notes [by Jim]: Davi and Lauren had breakfast with us and then departed for their 4 hour return trip to Hancock by car. The rest of the voyage was going to be just Lori and me. We hustled into gear, wanting to make it to the Bridge with plenty of good light left. We had heavy smoke from Canadian wildfires for most of the day, but it weirdly cleared out immediately before we made it to the Straits State Harbor in Mackinaw City. What had cleared out the smoke was some substantial wind. We had sustained 25 knots, which made it quite tricky to dock with no help on shore as we were too late to ask for help from Harbor staff. Lori ended up reprising her backing skills, and did manage to cleanly get aside a dock properly even though we had guessed wrong regarding which side we had put out our fenders thus necessitating the backing maneuver rather than going bow in as we usually prefer. The wind was simply too strong for me to have time to reset the fenders to the other side of the boat before we’d get pushed into trouble. We’ve gotten pretty good at docking now, but under these conditions, some help would have been very welcome. We had to slide in parallel to a sleek modern yacht that was about our size, but probably cost 20 times what we paid for Perseverance. Despite the price differential, their fiberglass hull would have come in 2nd best had our steel hull tagged it.
We rewarded ourselves with a very large and very good Italian dinner in town… we ate leftovers for another 3 meals afterwards.
Consulting our various meteorological oracles, we realized we had a very good weather window so we determined to leave port before daybreak and cruise the 110nm back to Escanaba in one go.
The exciting part of the voyage
July 21 [Jim, Lori]
Straits Harbor (Mackinaw City) (5:15)-Escanaba (7:59), 110nm
Notes [by Lori]: The final day of our adventure began rather inauspiciously with a 4:30am alarm immediately followed by Jim lacerating his big toe while thrashing about the stateroom. After determining the toe was still basically attached to his foot, first aid was rendered and we limped out of the harbor. [I was minding my own business trying to put on my shorts first thing in the morning. The boat rocked just a little bit and I lost my balance while flamingoing on one foot. Swinging my raised foot over the opened lower drawer where I keep my socks, I caught the sharp laminate edge and put a nice deep slice in the underside of my right big toe just at the crease of the joint. I managed to sacrifice one of my socks to keep the blood spurting out of my foot off the carpet and eventually got the bleeding to subside. I didn’t yell ‘cause it didn’t really hurt much, so Lori simply gave me one of her trademark deep sighs when she saw me hopping up to join her for breakfast with a blood soaked rag clutched to my foot. We decided it didn’t quite merit stitches, so we dressed it nicely and got underway.]
With “rosy fingered dawn” illuminating Mackinac Island, we turned Perseverance west and headed under the Mighty Mac back into our home waters of Lake Michigan. Looking back, we saw a large plume of steam rising just beyond Mackinac Island. A quick look at Marine Traffic informed us it was the Mesabi Miner bearing down on us at 12 knots. Moments later we realized the freighter was not our greatest concern.
A dozen or more black-sailed ships materialized out of the dawn light directly in our path. Not pirates, rather we had blundered into the leading wave of the Chicago to Mackinac sailboat race. 285 boats started the race Friday/Saturday and began hitting the Straits in the wee hours of Monday morning. We spent the next three hours trying to guess which way the skippers would tack and scanning for more sails spawning on the horizon. We managed to keep out of the way enough that we did not figure in the race results but we were close enough to wave to the weary crewmen hanging on the rails like so much ballast. A few managed to lift their arms to wave back, but most of them simply looked like meat sacks.
The black-sailed ships took one last run at us as we traversed Grey’s Reef passage, a channel just slightly wider than the widest freighter. Once we passed the lighthouse at the end we turned toward Beaver Island leaving the Chicago to Mackinac fleet behind us. Twelve miles ahead of us, our GPS showed the Mesabi Miner crossing our bow, having wisely chosen the northern route that avoided the racers.
This was our longest distance covered in a single day… 110 nm in 15 hours, but the boat ran like a champ. We had good weather for this leg and it actually felt fairly comfortable running it reasonably hard at 7.5 knots. The boat acted like it would have been happy to continue doing that for another week without rest. We pulled into Escanaba easily and tied up with no drama.
Epilogue
July 22 [Jim, Lori]
Escanaba, 0nm
Notes [by Jim]: It would be fair to say that we had more than a modicum of trepidation about this trip. At 513 miles and two full weeks with 6 people aboard, this was our biggest and most ambitious trip. We worried about the crew all turning on each other (the Hunger Games or The Lord of the Flies scenario) from too much close quarters togetherness, but everybody pretty much played nice. We worried about the international crossing, a touchy topic given the elevated international tensions and disturbing rhetoric in the news, but Lori’s research proved sufficient. It was however frustratingly difficult to find simple rules and reliable citations regarding how to do a water crossing. Lori solicited advice from a couple old boaters who had done it before which proved to be some of the most accurate and reliable help. We worried about finding and then maneuvering into a ton of new ports that we’d never seen before, but our Navigation system performed reliably (though not perfectly… still keeping our paper charts), and our docking skills continue to improve. We worried about mechanical reliability, but now after 5 seasons, we’ve learned a ton about boating in general, and Perseverance in particular. We’ve now got the confidence in not so much her reliability (have you read our previous trip reports?), but in our ability to detect, diagnose and work around the issues that inevitably will occur.
It was a good trip.
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