Les Miserables

We ended up leaving for our 3 week sailing vacation 6 days late. Not ideal, but also not the end of the world. The stupid propane project took WAY longer than expected to complete. But we were finally able to get everything together and leave Thursday afternoon. Needless to say, we were both very excited to finally be shoving off!

The smiles faded very soon after this picture was taken.

The weather report stated that the wind and waves would be a bit strong when leaving the city, 15-20 knot winds with 2-4 foot waves, but both would die down the more northeast we traveled and as the day went on. I am sad to say that the waves ended up being larger than the report. 2-4 foot waves, we can handle, but 4-6 foot waves with occasional waves up to 8 feet was not comfortable at all.  At first we were dealing with the situation but about an hour or two into the sail we both became very sea sick. We came up with a new game, who could throw up over the rail first. Sad to say I won that game but Brady came in a close second. 

It was a horrible and not very comfortable 10.5 hour trip. I could not do anything other than lay in a fetal position on the downwind side of the cockpit with Tuco. I don't think Tuco was too happy about the ride either. Brady was on the ground right next to me and we both were trying to stay out of the way of the frequent rogue waves that would come crashing over the dodger. And I haven't even brought up the weather, when we left it was about 70 degrees on land, so obviously it was cooler on the water. We shoved off just after 2pm so it quickly became a lot colder on the lake. We were very prepared and packed multiple layers and had our foul weather gear aboard, however, we were both feeling too miserable to stay down in the boat for longer than a couple minutes. With the frequent waves we were crashing into, it was hard to stay on your feet when we went below. Imagine being in a bouncy house as a 1st grader surrounded by middle school kids but instead of being surrounded by air filled plastic everything around you was made of wood and fiberglass. Going to the bathroom was a challenge in itself. Thankfully I could sit down but Brady had to do lunges to keep his balance. (He was kind enough to wipe down the head the next morning.)

There were a few bonuses to our trip... 1) even though we were being pounded and beat up by the waves, we flew over to St. Joseph, MI. 2) we were able to sail on a reach the entire way with a double reef in our main sail 3) we weren't heeled over too badly, it was the waves that were trying to knock us down. 4) the last 2 hours of our sail became more manageable but unlike our previous crossing from Saugatuck, we were not able to get that euphoric feeling of loving sailing. Nope, we only felt slightly better. Which was a HUGE improvement. 5) in the middle of all this Brady came up with this amazing blog post title.

We called the marina we booked a slip with before leaving so we could get our slip assignment, which we thought was a good idea until we pulled into the harbor and realized at the last minute that a 20 foot speed boat took our spot and we almost parked over them. Thankfully I saw them at the last minute and we were able to pull off an emergency dock job at the marina's fuel station. It was an exciting ending to a memorable crossing.