September 3, 2021: We leave Toledo and Lake Erie and cruise all the way up the Detroit River.
We left the Toledo area late because we needed to fuel up and the marina with diesel, Brenner 75 near the mouth of the river, didn’t open until 9 AM. We motored away from our overnight marina just before then, leaving Toledo behind us.
The city of Toledo, which we never really got to see, behind us as we headed back down the Maumee River.
After leaving the fuel dock, Capt Paul followed the channel almost all the way to the lighthouse in Lake Erie that we’d passed the day before. From there, the autopilot had us cut the corner to avoid the shipping channel.
There was a dredging operation going on in the main channel on the way into Toledo harbor.
It wasn’t until we left Lake Erie behind and got into the system of river channels in the Detroit River that we started seeing big cargo ships. Dianne was familiar with these ships. It’s apparently what she does for a living — guide or monitor these ships by radio and AIS systems as they make their way through this part of the Great Lakes. I was at the helm when she saw a ship ahead of us on an app on her phone and called someone — maybe at her workplace? — to ask where it was going. It wasn’t a big deal — we never got close to it — but we did get close to at least one other later in the day. In each case, it was a non-event; the channels were plenty wide and the ships weren’t going very fast so they didn’t even throw up much wake.
Here’s a shot from my seat at one of the larger freighters we passed that morning.
I should mention here that Nano has an AIS receiver that shows AIS-equiped boats like these cargo ships as little triangles. Tap a triangle to get more information, including the name, distance, and speed of the ship. So if you saw a ship in the distance, you could get all the information you needed about it right from the chart plotter system.
I followed the autopilot guidance, although I did disengage the autopilot after a while and used heading hold to navigate through the channels. It was easier to just follow the red buoys along the right side of the boat, sticking to the starboard side of the channel as we went northbound. That left plenty of space for the big ships and any smaller boats to pass us without having to get out of their way.
And that’s how we progressed up the Detroit River, chugging along against the current, making about 10 knots most of the way.
The city of Detroit from the Detroit River. It was a really pleasant day.
The river starting getting crowded not long after we passed the city. With the crowds, the water got rougher. Most of the boats were big recreational boats — the kind that are showy and have multiple inboard engines. They kicked up a ton of wake. They passed us in both directions — heck, I don’t think we passed a single boat that day unless it was stopped.
Capt Paul took over when my two hours were up. I sat at the table for a while, watching the world go by. We eventually passed Belle Isle and turned into the channel where our destination marina, Grayhaven Mooring Facility, was. There was some confusion over where to park and I called the marina. That got a guy out onto the dock to guide us into a spot at the end of a dock finger. We’d be parked right on a channel that served the marina and a bunch of residential docks on the other side. We had arrived.
Here’s Day 25 on Nebo. You can follow our path each day in the Nebo boating app. Just look for Nano Paul G.
We spent the rest of the day taking it easy. There wasn’t anything else to do. The marina wasn’t near anything so walking to lunch was not an option. I think we all had leftovers to eat.
I spent a lot of time working on this blog, still trying to catch up. I wrote and published posts for Day 18 and Day 19.
In the evening, a parade of outbound boats began. Again, these were all very large, very showy powerboats, usually with parties of people on board. They usually went out at no wake speed. Some had loud engines, others had loud stereos. I’d hear a few of them coming back later that night, after I’d gone to bed.
It was a holiday weekend, after all.
