Day 32: Port Austin to Harrisville

September 10, 2021: A relatively smooth ride to a great marina in a sad little town.

Once again, we departed at a little after 7 AM. At this point, with the sun rising later and later every day, it was right after sunrise. I suspect that when we cross into central time — which we’ll have to do sooner or later — we’ll be leaving earlier again. Capt Paul likes to get moving early, which is good thing when you might have to compete for dockage. At this point, however, there was little competition. What the early departure — and destination arrival, of course — meant was that we had more time to spend at our destinations, especially if there was no shore day there.

Capt Paul’s preferred weather app, Predict Wind, had predicted waves of 1-2 feet early on, subsiding to 1 foot after 8 or 9 AM (I can’t remember which). It turned out to be overly optimistic. Seas were at least 2 feet when we departed, giving us a rough but not totally unpleasant ride. We were motoring almost directly into the wind with the waves coming at us, so although we had that up and down motion, we didn’t have that annoying — or should I say sickening? — side to side motion to go with it. Still, it was too rough to cruise at our normal speed so he throttled it back, keeping us moving at around 9 knots.

We were crossing the mouth of Saginaw Bay, which is the space between the “thumb” and “fingers” of Michigan’s “mitten.” Our original plan had been to cross a relatively narrow part to East Tawas. Somehow that had morphed into a plan to end up farther up the coast, to Oscoda and then to Harrisville. That basically doubled the distance we had to travel and increased the angle across the bay, thus increasing the time over open water. It wasn’t a big deal — the water wasn’t giving us a pleasant ride, but it wasn’t anything like the hardship of the previous day’s last half hour.

We followed a bigger cruiser out of the harbor, but he soon lost us in his wake. I figure he was probably doing 12 to 15 knots. We watched him fade into the distance for at least three hours. At first, I thought he was going the same place we were — his track was that similar. But then he seemed to veer slightly to the west, perhaps to Oscoda.

The only other boat we saw was a huge cargo ship that passed in front of us almost two hours into our cruise. We could see him coming as soon as we got out into the lake and watched him recede into the distance for at least another hour after his passing. By that time, we had lost sight of land in any direction. We could have been in the ocean.

The Nebo app showed other recreational boats ahead of us and behind us. Safe Haven left Port Austin about 45 minutes after we did. There was another one who left Harrisville around the same time we left Port Austin. They were hard to track because we lost cell service around the same time we lost sight of land. But it looked as if we might actually be catching up with some of the other late loopers.

After his two hours at the helm, Capt Paul turned it over to me. I did the same thing he’d done: sit there while the autopilot kept us on course. You can see by the Nebo log below just how straight a course it steered.

A while after he’d gone in to take his nap, I started noticing a change. Were the waves flattening out? Was the boat doing less banging down after each nose up glide? Was everything calming down? After studying the situation for a half hour or so, I couldn’t deny what my eyes were telling me: the lake was calming.

Well, I reasoned, if the water was calmer, there was no reason why we couldn’t operate at full cruising speed. So little by little, I goosed up the throttle to 3200 RPM, getting us 11 to 12 knots. I don’t even know if Dianne noticed; we don’t talk much and she didn’t react to my change.

I checked the arrival time on the GPS and noted that I’d knocked 16 minutes off the arrival time.

For the remainder of the cruise, the water got smoother and smoother. By the time we got within sight of the marina, it was flat with just tiny ripples from the breeze. Whoa. Why can’t it be like that all the time?

Capt Paul woke up and joined us up front. He asked if I wanted him to take over. With very little wind and smooth water, I asked to take it in to the fuel dock. He agreed.

He did some radio work and got very concise instructions on where to come in to park for fuel. I let the autopilot make the turn into the marina, then disengaged it and took over. But that time, I’d brought it down to our no wake speed of about 4 knots. There was some confusion when another boat cut in front of us to reach the fuel dock, but he moved to the other side. I came in very slowly, never losing control of the boat. My goal was to dock it without using the bow and stern thrusters. (They’re nice to have, but I believe they should be used only when necessary.) I did pretty well and only hit the bow thruster once when I thought the boat was getting too close to the dock without a fender in place.

Ah, if only all dockings could be without wind or current!

Day 32 of my trip on the Nebo boating app’s log. Where the color changes from green to red is where I increased speed.

At Harrisville

We fueled up and Capt Paul moved the boat over to a slip where a bunch of other cruising boats were already parked. More would join us later in the day. Then came the daily ordeal for choosing a lunch destination.

I call it an ordeal but that’s just because of my limited patience and the fact that we seem to go through the same exercise every time we arrive at a new port. That day’s version included a recitation by Dianne of the restaurants she found on Google along with a running commentary based on what she read there or the name of the place or photos of menu items in the Google listing and finally whether or not Google said it was open. Then there was the bulletin board outside the marina office which had menus and flyers for a bunch of restaurants but no indication of where they were. Finally, the walk into town to see whether the restaurant we’d tentatively decided on was open. Ultimately, the realization that where we wanted to eat was not open and there was really only one choice, which is where we ended up.

We’ve been doing some version of this for the past week now and it’s getting old. But I know it’s just me. Limited patience, etc. (More on that in the Day 33 post.)

That day we ended up about a half mile from the marina at the Flour Garden, which was a weird mix of bakery, package liquor store, and cafe. The food was fine — nothing special, but beggars can’t be chosers. Afterwards, we split up, with me stopping in at every single open shop on the way back to the boat. There weren’t many; sadly, a lot of the storefronts were empty. There were a few artist co-ops, one of which was rather nice. The ice cream shop was closed for the season, but the guy in the coffee shop next door was doing his best to sell out on the last three flavors they had: mint chocolate chip, anniversary cake, and another obscure flavor I can’t remember.

I did go into the grocery store and buy some vanilla yogurt and grape nuts cereal; all we had in the cereal department on the boat was sugar-rich granola from the Whole Food’s visit in Detroit. I was disappointed that I wasn’t offered cash back on my debit card purchase. I had less than $3 in cash left and had to hit an ATM. Fees totaled $5.50. Eek!

The marina at Harrisville is, by far, the nicest one we’d been to by that point of my trip. The docks were in excellent condition, the staff was friendly and helpful, the bathrooms and showers were clean and well maintained, the laundry room was clean, the lounge was pleasant.

Chores

Eventually, I got back to Nano and, since Capt Paul said we’d be leaving in the morning, decided to spend the afternoon taking a shower, doing my laundry, and finally catching up on the blog. The marina had a nice little lounge with great wifi that was quiet and near enough to the laundry to tend to it as it went through its cycles. I wrote up Day 30 and Day 31 published them both before leaving.

I was all caught up! Finally!

While I was in the lounge, I overheard the harbormaster and some incoming boaters talking about the next day’s weather. I looked it up. There were small craft advisories for Harrisville and our next destination, Alpena, that did not expire until 7 PM the next day. If these guys in their much bigger boats were worried about them, maybe we should be, too. I sent a link to the weather information to Capt Paul. He responded that it made the Go/No Go decision easier — we’d be spending another day in Harrisville.

By the time I returned with my laundry, some live music had begun in the park adjacent to the marina. We’d seen a listing in the restaurant about this concert and I knew Paul and Dianne were interested. I mentioned it to them and they headed out, leaving me alone.

I put away my laundry, made up my bunk, and then retired out to the cockpit to read and have a glass of wine. I could hear the sound of music drift over on the breeze. A crescent moon hung rather high in the sky. It was a nice end to a pleasant day.

I was in bed before Capt Paul and Dianne returned.