Bayfield to Mackinaw City delivery, part 2

Shanti arrived safely in Mackinaw City yesterday morning around 9 am.  Tom has a commitment in Chicago on Tuesday, so we made only two stops for a total of about 16 hours.  We were underway about 72 hours, and didn't tolerate a boat speed less than 4 knots.  We logged 375 miles but actually covered more over the ground as the current in the St. Mary's River was 2 knots in places.

The day we left Bayfield, the wind was blowing 25-30 knots, so we waited until the wind died down a bit before leaving the dock at 1600.  First stop, the fuel dock to pump out and top off with diesel.  Unfortunately, the marina crew had gone home early because of the high winds, so the fuel dock was closed.  I was already in the head flushing fresh water through when Bill, the marina manager, showed up to tell me it would take 15 minutes to build up enough suction for the pumpout, and he wasn't sure exactly how it worked.  By this time it was 1630 and no other marina in the area was answering my radio call, so we decided to head out.  We could pump out and top off at Houghton County Marina, 110 miles into our trip.

The crew had picked up the genoa from the sail loft that morning, but it was too windy in the slip with wind in the wrong direction to raise it, so we used the protection of the marina breakwall to give us flat water in order to accomplish this task.  I turned Shanti off the wind, and we were off!  Soon after we were underway, Chrystal called out from the cabin, "The toilet's running over!"  I had left the intake valve open in preparation for pumping out and the shower sump was already full.  Fortunately, I had also left the door to the head open and Chrystal was sitting where she could see in.  Disaster averted!

We switched to eastern time, and settled into a watch rotation of three hours each, with Tom taking the first watch, then Lauren, then me. Chrystal stood watch with Lauren that first 2100-0000 watch, then decided she was a captive passenger and stayed inside the cabin sleeping, watching movies and killing flies.  She did come out into the cockpit a few times to have a cigarette or to look at something we pointed out to her.  We were able to sail the first few hours, then our boat speed dropped when the wind died, so we started motor-sailing shortly after midnight.  I was awakened at 7 am, feeling the waves against the hull and the boat heeling more, and was surprised to see that we were still motoring in spite of 14 knots of wind at 60 degress apparent. It's really easy to decide when to turn on the engine when on a passage, but a lot more difficult to know when to turn it off. We sailed until noon when we reached the Upper Entrance to the Keweenaw Waterway, then we turned on the engine and furled the headsail for the trip down the waterway.

We reached the lift bridge over the waterway around 1400.  I called the bridge tender when we had the bridge in sight, giving an 8 minute ETA and asking for a lift to 60 feet.  We never slowed down, and the bridge tender had the bridge up and out of the way just seconds before we passed under it.  My first time through, I didn't know how quickly the bridge could be raised, so I slowed down.  Now, after several trips through, I trust the bridge tender to get the bridge up, and I also know I can turn around quickly if I need to.  The height of the bridge deck is marked in large numbers on the towers, so it was easy to see if it was high enough.  I asked for 60 feet, and he gave me 65, but still, from the perspective of an observer in the cockpit of a small sailboat looking up a 49 foot mast with antenna and wind instruments mounted on top, even 65 feet doesn't look like enough clearance!  But we were through the bridge, it started coming down, and I contacted the harbormaster at the Houghton County Marina.  We pulled into the fuel dock where we took on 10.7 gallons of diesel and pumped out Shanti's holding tank.  With four people on the boat for a four-day trip I figured we would fill it to capacity, and didn't want to risk an overflow.

We left the marina after a 20 minute stop, passed by a dredge working in the middle of the river, and found we were motoring directly into to wind, so I decided to raise the mainsail.  We would soon turn south to enter Portage Lake, and the wind in the sail would give us an additional half knot of boat speed.  With Tom guiding the slugs in the slot on the mast and Lauren on the halyard, the sail was about halfway up when suddenly Lauren fell backwards as the halyard ran freely, or at least with a lot less tension than before.  The sail came falling back down to the boom, and I looked up to see the halyard with open shackle still attached, about ten feet short of the top of the mast.  We secured the sail and headed back to the marina so we could send someone up the mast to retrieve the halyard.

Tied securely to the dock, we discussed who should go up.  Tom volunteered, but I thought the least heavy person should do it, so I took the assignment myself.  My sailmaker, Pete, had said I should check the spreader boots because of chafe on the sails and I thought I could also tighten the windex, which swiveled as the wind direction changed, making it difficult to see the apparent wind direction.  The spinnaker halyard was the only available halyard unless we also dropped the genoa, so I had to go up without a safety line.  I climbed into the bosun's chair, and got really friendly with Shanti's mast.  As Lauren and Tom winched me up, I discovered there are not many footholds, and the bottoms of my Tevas gave no grip at all on the painted aluminum surface.  I decided there would be no way for me to go up the mast if I was single-handing, and if such an occasion arose while racing, I would have to drop out as the rules of the Great Lakes Singlehanded Society state that no outside help is allowed while racing.

Finally, I was high enough to reach the wayward halyard, grabbed it with one hand, and realized that it would be difficult to reach the windex from the front of the mast.  I also felt very uncomfortable trying to do anything forty feet above the deck with no safety line, so I ditched the idea of tightening the windex, and the crew lowered me back down.  The entire operation took about 10 minutes, and we were off the dock just 30 minutes after we had left the first time, halyard now securely attached to the head of the mainsail.  The rest of the trip through the Keweenaw Waterway/Portage Canal was uneventful. We enjoyed seeing the fall foliage which we estimated was still only 50% of peak color. We reached the lower entry about 1700, ready for the longest open-water passage of the trip:  135 miles to Whitefish Point.