The 'Hard'-est Decision

We made it to Plymouth, Massachusetts through three of the five Great Lakes, four rivers, two canals, two other lakes, Long Island Sound, Hells Gate, and 36 locks to get to the ocean. We also had to start dealing with tides and currents, salt water, lobster pots, large ships and marine life during this trip. We have sailed over 1800 nautical miles and finally 'landed on' or in the same harbor as Plymouth Rock! INSANE!

It was our hardest harbor to get into due to the strong 15-20 knot wind, the current pushing us every which way and crazy power boaters swerving every way around us yelling "Hey Chicago!" as they left us dealing with their wake. It was a VERY tight channel we had to come through and our little atomic 4 motor could just barely keep up with all of the factors trying to push us out of the channel into very shallow waters. Thankfully she was able to keep up when we pushed her at the last couple of miles to keep us in-between the buoys and afloat!

After grabbing a mooring ball we took a break from Further and ventured into town to wander around Plymouth see the Rock where the pilgrims first landed, and the Mayflower II. It quickly was dinner time and time to plan for the next adventure (day). (As Gramps says, every day is an adventure out here! We never thought about it like that until he came out to be with us but he couldn't be more correct with this statement!)

I was unable to sleep that night due to our breeze bandit (this parachute like tube that redirects the wind into our v-berth and cabin) whipping in the wind. And all I could think about while laying awake, listening to the wind howling, was how bad tomorrow's sail is going to be in high/choppy seas. First light took a long time to show itself and as soon as it did I hopped on my phone to check the weather. Just as I thought, the winds were showing no signs of slowing down and the marine weather forecast had issued a small craft advisory for basically the entire New England coast from Casco Bay (just outside of Portland, Maine all the way down to the bottom half of the Cape. No buneo. The only area of water that was not included in this advisory was the area where we were to our destination for that evening (Salem or Gloucester). So, we could make the very uncomfortable trek to the next city but then we would be stuck until the seas calmed down.

As soon as Brady woke up I informed him of our predicament. After looking at the weather again and the five day forecast for marine conditions and weather things didn't look as though they would be improving anytime soon. Seas were expected to be three to five or six feet minimum until Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. Double no bueno. We knew we had to stop and have a BIG discussion to weigh out all out options. The weather may or may not have improved before Thursday/Friday. We may not be able to stay in one spot for that long with the busy last week of summer upon us and Labor Day creeping around the corner. We still had roughly about 140 nautical miles to go which would take us 5 days to get to Portland. Not possible to get Brady to his first day of school on Sept 6 if we had to wait till Friday for the weather to change so we could leave. Time finally caught up with us. Like I said before, we could have sailed very uncomfortably to Gloucester that day however we did not want to get stuck there. They don't have as good of services for sailboats as they do in Plymouth.

We unfortunately knew exactly what we had to do as soon as we started crunching the numbers. My eyes couldn't stop watering, now even after a couple of days, my eyes are still watering writing this. This would be the final sailing destination of our trip. We ran out of time. If we didn't have to be somewhere next week, we would have been able to wait out the weather and continue on, this is the luxury true cruisers have when you don't have deadline. So, with heavy hearts and very few words except for rechecking the weather and making sure there wasn't another way we could sail to Portland we walked to Brewer Marina to figure out how to get Further on the hard (take her out of the water) and ship her to Portland. While walking hand in hand my heart slowly melted through little cracks into my abdomen. It took everything Brady had to keep his voice from cracking while asking all of the questions we had about how to haul and ship Further. I wasn't able to take off my sunglasses while talking with the kind woman who walked us through every step like it was no problem. In fact, this is something they do all the time. They made it so easy for us. It was exactly what we needed at the time.

We took all of this information back to the boat to look things over one last time before putting this new plan in motion. Within hours we had everything set up, the haul out scheduled, the transport truck scheduled, indoor (non heated) storage in Portland set up and rented a car to take us the rest of the 146 miles of this trip. This was done before we finished our first cup of coffee. I still can't believe just how easy and smooth everything went. And on Tuesday the new plan was put into motion. It made us feel that this in fact was exactly how our story was supposed to go. Not the ending we would have initially chosen but fitting none the less. We not only were able to do everything we wanted during this trip but we did it successfully! We were still getting compliments from dock hands who liked our spring line docking techniques. We had handled extreme currents with our little motor. People all along the way would give us crazy looks when we told them what we were doing but we had confidence in ourselves and we never did anything that put us in grave danger or over our heads. Did we get into a lot of hairy situations, yes. Did we think we were crazy, yes. but we tackled each challenge one at a time and accomplished everything we set out to accomplish.

It was hard for the first 30 minutes to not feel like failures but then we thought about everything we did and yes there was still some mist in our eyes because this part of the adventure was over but the smiles didn't leave our faces for the pride we felt knowing we did it! We sailed to New England! We got to come into a cute little fishing town and experience the cute little New England harbors and just like the pilgrims, our sea journey ended at Plymouth (literally steps away from the rock)! And as Gramps says, everyday is a new adventure. Yes this is!

The best part about it is after we got everything lined up we ended up relaxing at a bar. Since we were the only people in there we somehow got onto the topic of our journey. At the end of the conversation she said "I've never met real sailors before". And she was so nice but didn't know the first thing about boats or sailing, which she admitted, but that didn't matter. I don't know if we will ever think of ourselves as sailors since there is always so much to learn but I guess we should give ourselves more credit and start thinking of ourselves in that way. So, now that this year's sailing adventure is over, it's time to start Brady's school and our living in Maine adventure! However, we cannot wait to start planning our next big trip, which will begin to happen as soon as we get our whiteboard!

Enjoying our last sunset on Further in the mooring field - Plymouth, Massachusetts

(Stay tuned for past posts of this adventure, more and more will be popping up soon! I promise I have not forgotten about them!)

A Bad Decision

Screen shot of the chart for the islands of Lake Erie

Everyone has done this at least once or twice in their lives, right?!? Well, I admit that I have made a few, er, I mean many bad decisions in my time. Almost always I look back and am able to learn from my mistake which lets me give my past self a little thanks for making the wrong choice because it got me to where I am now and it has made me learn what not to do, or try to not do in the future. (I'm only human of course!) well, a couple days ago I made yet another bad decision but unfortunately I realized it was bad about 10 minutes after we left a safe harbor. I'll start from the beginning. 

We had to make a detour from our original place we wanted to stay on Lake Erie because unknown to us, it was Christmas in July. We unfortunately found this out after leaving the Detroit harbor while we were on our way to our destination. We have been very lucky with finding open slips at harbors along our trip with out too much hassle but unfortunately our luck ran out with this destination. We quickly did some research and came up with a couple of plan b's that we weighed out. One option was to head to stay on Lake Erie's coast and go somewhere around Port Clinton for the evening. The second was to see if we would be able to get a mooring ball at Put-In-Bay even though it was Christmas in July, who celebrates this and why is this not listed in any cruising guide?!? The last and most appealing option was to head to an island about 12 nautical miles away from our original destination, Pelee Island, however this meant that we would have to spend the night in Canada. No problem we thought. We brought our passports for just this just-in-case we need to spend an unforeseen night in Canada reason so no big deal. We would then hit our next stop in Ohio and bypass Put In Bay all together and continue on our merry way. 

That all sounded great until we read the fine print of how to go about going through customs when entering back into the US on a boat. A little red tape that we didn't consider. We thought that getting into another country would be the problem not coming back into our country of residence! Apparently you have to check into customs when you anchor, dock or set foot in another country. So, we don't have to do anything if we just sail through like we were doing when going down the St Clair River, the Detroit River and Lake St Claire. Brady's cell phone plan didn't get that memo and would pick up Canada's services even when we were still in US territory. (Funny how that never seemed to work the other way!) 

We learned when thankfully we read more into coming back into the states that you had to go to the nearest customs station as soon as you dock back in the US. The stop we were planning to continue to did not have a customs video phone or customs office so we would have had to rent a car and drive to the nearest customs office. I'm not exactly sure how that would have worked since you are supposed to be with the mode of transportation you arrived back in the country with. To by pass this insanity we decided to make the 12 mile journey to Put-in-Bay because they had a customs video phone right next to the dock and we would be able to check back into the US with much less hassle than we would of we want to the other town. Decision made. 

Pelee Island was very beautiful, or at least the 2 blocks we saw of it because it was hotter than all heck we couldn't walk anywhere else other than to the dock office to check in with customs and to the ice cream shop. It was so hot that we had ice cream before dinner and we ate our dinner in the dark! This heat wave is not fun without AC. 

The following morning's weather was scattered storms so we were trying to plan our departure in between the storms. Since our destination was only 12 miles away we knew we could wait for a decent break in the storms and make it to the next island without any issues. 

So, after deciding to wait until after the first line of storms passed I made us some breakfast burritos. The entire time Brady was checking the weather and following the storms. Hindsight is 20/20 and Brady was kinda kicking himself that we should have just left because he kept saying "we would be there by now". It turned out that the first wave diminished before they reached us and we kept going back and fourth if we could make it before the next wave hit. After hearing Brady flip flopping back and fourth and seeing other boats leave all morning, I got it in my head that, if they are going we should be too... Seeing what everyone else was doing and second guessing our original decision of waiting till after the first wave of storms was the start of my bad decision. We know to NEVER think like that but for some reason the peer pressure was getting to me. So I made a decision, since we were only 12 nautical miles away and the storms were a ways out, that we should go now in case it got worse later on. 

So, out we went. As soon as we got passed the breakwall, the waves and wind quickly picked up. It's funny how the water and wind can seem so calm while in a harbor but as soon as you pass the breakwall Mother Nature only then shows her true colors. That is something I quite often forget to take into account when we discuss if we stay or if we go. The minute we got around the breakwall I knew I made a bad decision. I knew we would be fine but it would be a very bad and uncomfortable 12 mile ride. After apologizing for my bad decision, I mentioned to Brady that we are close enough to turn around and head back to the harbor but since we were already out it would be too dangerous to try to head back in with the wind and the waves steadily increasing quickly.

 We immediately put up our sails (with two reefs in) to help us get more stable and get through the waves more efficiently than our motor could. We got about half way when the winds picked up and the storm hit. Thankfully before it did, we put in the third reef and brought in the jib even more. As soon as everything hit we were surprised how comfortable we could sail in 30+ winds. I should say as comfortable as one can be in 5-6 foot waves, with rain pounding down and trying to tack back and forth In between a couple of reefs and islands while sailing about 7.5 knots! But believe me, it was the most comfortable, I should say the least stressed, we have been while in a storm. And we had the most control of the boat as well, which I'm sure helped keep down the stress. The boat was barely overpowered for the two hour sail in the storm. The third reef worked like a charm! Thankfully Brady rigged it up the day before. Even Tuco gave his seal of approval by sleeping through the storm! He only moved when it started to rain and went back to sleep after we covered him with a rain jacket. 

As soon as the winds began to die down we started to head to Put-in-Bay to check back into the states and check out the so called Key West of the Great Lakes. Even though the experience wasn't as bad as it could have been and we gained some good experience with a third reef, I would not make that same decision again. Next time we will analyze all the information we have in front of us and try to make the best decision possible. Once we do make a decision we will stick with it even if it wasn't the right one (we decide to stay in port because the marine forecast and weather are predicting unfavorable conditions but it turns out being a nice day) because more times than not, it will be the right and safest decision!

Two Lakes and a River

Going under the Bluewater Bridge - it unofficially marks the separation between Lake Huron and the St Clair River

Our last 15 nautical miles on Lake Huron started off a perfect ending to the non forgiving lake we have experienced this last week and a half however that quickly changed to the normal high winds and waves that we have experienced day in and day out while sailing the entire length of this lake. We were determined to not let this get to us and sailed to the last bouys before the St Clair River entrance, which is also a very high traffic area with both large and small boats zooming by!

We are happy to get off Lake Huron!

As soon as we hit the river our motoring speed increased 1-2 knots due to the current, first time experiencing a current and fortunately for us we were going the same direction!  We averaged about 7 knots going down it, which was great since we lost some time by tacking back and fourth on the southern end of Lake Huron. This marks off two more firsts for us; going down a major river with large ships and dealing with a current! 

Sharing the road

As we entered the St Clair River we had Canada on the left, north, side and Michigan on the right. At first it was very industrial and then it was lined with houses and nature on both sides. I never knew that a river with so many big boats going through could be so beautiful! Luckily we docked just before a line of storms hit the area. (Thankfully our luck hasn't run out just yet in regards to the weather!) However, these storms did not help with the heat, things just got more steamy after they passed. The town was so cute but once again we were too exhausted to go out and explore. It ended up being to our advantage since we were able to enjoy a free live concert across the river from our dock!

Detroit Lighthouse

Going under another bascule bridge!

How do you keep a dog cool
during a heat wave?
Put him on top of the fridge!

The Detroit River

The next day we headed to Detroit. We completed the trip through the St Clair River, went through Lake St Clair and then entered into the Detroit River where once again we were very shocked to see just how beautiful this area was. This was my first time in the area and other than the insane heat, it was nothing like I expected! Both rivers were not surprising, very industrial, however what was surprising was a) how clean both rivers were (who thinks of Detroit or any major city having a clean river, much cleaner than the Chicago River) and b) how many beautiful homes were lined up on the river front and c) how the majority of both rivers were lined with nature and not industry! We were able to enjoy the sights of industry, urban landscape and nature all working together. Both Brady and I kept looking at each other and saying, I never knew Detroit had this side to it! I love being extremely surprised because my assumption of somewhere is completely different than what I experience. One of my favorite things about traveling and visiting new places! 

The Ambassador Bridge with Detroit in the background

The Route - Finally!!!

Our route through the Great Lakes

So I seriously just now realized that I should have shared this much earlier so that the handful of you amazing people who are reading this have a better idea of our route. We still are learning the geography of the northeast United States, and we didn't know much about our route until we started mapping it out. Thankfully we read about others via blogs and books who went before us so we had somewhat of an idea of how to plan it out but the route still didn't quite sink in, how exactly everything fit together until we mapped out our tentative route town by town, day by day.

Before we left we had the first leg of the route, Chicago to Detriot, mapped out. It wasn't until the other day, when we planned out the next leg of our trip that our path from Detroit to Buffalo started to become more clear. We are waiting to complete the rest of the trip when Brady's gramps joins us. So keep tracking us!  

Recovery Robert - aka Lord of the Rings

Picture of Robert's website homepage

This morning was like any other morning. We wandered up to the restrooms to freshen ourselves up for the morning and after coming back, I decided to take Tuco out for his morning stroll. After walking around Lexington's beautiful public park we headed back to the boat. The boat was a bit far from the dock and I was worried about Tuco falling in so I reached down for our spring line to pull the boat closer and picked up the dog and bloop, I hear my phone fall into the water. Awesome, just awesome. I threw on my bathing suit, grabbed our mask and psyched myself into diving in the water. It wasn't deep but there is something mentally I have to prepare for when I jump in water where you can't see the bottom. Give me a tank and I'll jump right in but I hesitate when jumping into new waters blind. I jumped in after 30 seconds of pep talk and was pleasantly surprised when I found the water warmer than the air. One bonus. After attempting to dive down twice, I'm way too buoyant without fins, a tank and a weight belt, I knew me getting down to the bottom of the harbor was a lost cause.

I forgot to mention that the visibility was zero, unlike the viz in the harbors in northern Michigan. Brady was kind enough to attempt to free dive down to try to retrieve it. His legs at least got under the water and didn't flail up on the surface like mine did. (I'm currently chuckling to myself right now because I'm envisioning what everyone else in the harbor saw when I tried to free dive and retrieve my phone compared to what I thought I looked like. The first time I tried to free dive down I thought I did a decent job. I knew I didn't get the second half of my body under the second attempt. When I asked Brady how I did, he crushed my dreams and answered, both times it looked like you were a deranged synchronized swimmer.) 

It was a lost cause. My phone was gone. Brady, being awesome kept reassuring me that it was just an expensive mistake and to not worry about it. Weirdly, I wasn't too distraught about losing it forever but I did feel bad about losing all of the pictures we took on our entire northern Michigan part of the trip. So, instead of just saying screw it and sailing on, Brady convinced me that we might be able to retrieve it. Up to the harbor office we went to see if the kids working had access to some scuba gear. At Montrose, they have a tank to help do upkeep on the harbor and sometimes they will help boaters retrieve stuff. So, worst they could say was no. Unfortunately they didn't have any scuba gear. Brady would not let me give up. We waiting around until 9am, when all the dive shops were open and then he called one of them. He was very animated and excited to the man on the other side of the phone. Immediately I had hope we might be able to get it back, in true Brady and Nadine form, we called at just the perfect moment when the owner just happened to be grabbing something in the shop and happened to pick up the phone. He gave Brady a number for a guy who "retrieves things from the lake". Now my hopes are up. I can't believe that there is a guy in the area who might be able to dive for my phone in a harbor in Lake Huron on a Wednesday. 

So, we continued on our quest. Thankfully Robert picked up his phone awaiting our call. Apparently the dive shop owner gave him a heads up that we would be calling. Robert told Brady he would be able to try to retrieve the phone the following morning. After asking Brady where in the lake I dropped it and Brady explaining that we are on a boat and will be on the boat awaiting him whenever he could come help. For some reason this led the conversation to why we were living on a boat and that we were gonna sail to our next destination after he came to get my phone. Not sure what changed his mind but Robert then informed Brady that he would be able to stop by this evening to help us out and that his charge was gas and cost to refill his tank (which cost about $6). What!?! I'm sorry, is this guy really going to come here for practically nothing? Is this really happening?!? 

So, we hung out in Lexington for the day stopping in a bar or two and the local brewery (which makes really amazing fruity beers). We happened upon his website and found that Scuba Bob, we affectionately named him, aka Lord of the Rings on his website, is kinda amazing! Best story is about a ring Robert found that was a class ring from 1954 that was used as an engagement ring and returned it back to the owner and his still wife 54 years later! We knew we were in good hands!

Recovery Robert, another name we affectionately had for Robert, showed up in full scuba gear at the Lexington Municipal Marina around 6pm and literally jumped right in! (Ok, he really walked down the ladder and swam over to where the phone made contact with the water and then descended down into the murky harbor water. After a couple of minutes and a handful of bubbles later up popped an iPhone with a hand grasped tightly around it in triumph! Robert's buddy grabbed it from him and handed the phone to me and sure enough that was my phone, recovered from the lake only 12 hours after it went for its swim. Robert gleefully climbed back up the ladder and was received by many cheers and thanks from Brady and I! 

After giving Robert his reward for his time and just for being him, we walked him back to his truck where we saw the treasures he recovered when diving for 6 hours, yes 6 hours, off Belle Isle in the Detroit River. The coolest thing we thought he found was an Ovaltine decoder ring, like the one Ralphie got in A Christmas Story! Robert walked away with another happy, smiling, satisfied costemer. Seriously, this was amazing, too unreal to make up. Robert has inspired me to go out and try to find my own gems under the water! Click here to see a local news story about the man, the myth, the legend, Recovery Robert!

Next step, put the phone in a bag of silica gel for a few days and see what happens. Keep those fingers crossed and stay tuned!