17 Jun 17

In spite of last night’s rain, it was warm, so we had the A/C on all night. After a leisurely breakfast, we spent an hour washing some of the Erie Canal scum off the topsides on the port side (next to the dock). About 11:00, we got underway. The SSW wind served well for our NW course to Middle Bass Island, so we sailed all the way from the Huron Harbor entry buoy to just outside the entry to the Middle Bass Island State Park Marina, where we tied up at about 15:00. Lovely sail with the wind behind the mast the whole way. We toyed with hoisting the spinnaker, but the wind was a little bit fluky and we had a few good gusts to 19, plus there were so many power boats zipping about, that the wakes kept it rough and unpredictable, so we were content with the jib and main (with 1 reef). Dock to dock with only 0.7 hours of engine use; that’s what I’m talking about. We had dinner aboard and then went for a long walk around the island.

41-40.501’N, 082-48.667’W; Log = 22.6, Sum (2017) = 722.2 N-m

18 Jun 17

As predicted, the wind got up during the night, from the SW. This was pushing us onto the dock and, as the starboard rub-rail started squealing against the dock posts, we finally got up at 04:00 to do something about it. As I stepped out of the cockpit onto the side-deck, I stepped barefoot in a pile of about a thousand Mayflies - yuck. We moved fenders around and set a breast line from the port side of the boat to the other dock to hold us off the leeward dock, then went back to bed. When we finally got up at 09:00, there were about a million Mayflies (including the thousands I squashed in the dark) hanging out on the boat - never saw anything like it. The Admiral was not feeling too chipper, so after cleaning off the deck and washing the Erie Canal mustache off the starboard side of the boat, we just lazed around the boat, reading. We did take a short walk over by the winery to see the local glacial grooves - i.e., grooves carved in the rocks during the 4 ice ages over the last 300,000 years - pretty cool. On the way back to the boat, I was attacked by a bird, for no apparent reason; weird. A thunderstorm blew through in the afternoon and dropped a bit of rain, and cooled things off a touch. After dinner aboard, we walked up to Walleyes, the local bar, to watch the Astros / Red Sox game, but they closed the bar half way through the 4th inning with the score tied 1-1; unfortunately, the Astros went on to lose 6-5.