Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada
Compared to all the traffic on entering during Friday’s arrival, yesterday (Tuesday) Port Huron was practically a ghost town. The season over with, all the boats just disappeared. We held up there for a couple of extra days: the first day (Sunday) to finish needed maintenance, the second to wait for weather. On Monday, the southerly winds built the St. Clair River’s opposing current into quite a frothy, choppy mess. It was too bad for those who had to be to work on Tuesday, as they were forced to go out and fight through it. We spoke with one boater who commented that his whole bow was swallowed in a seven foot wave and he though was going straight under. After what we saw on Friday when we came in, we knew it could be bad, and it wasn’t something we wanted to experience. Besides, Tuesday’s weather forecasted winds from the north, perfect for flattening river’s waters and increasing the speed of its current – which is nice. We decided to wait and go on Tuesday.
Bing keeping busy . . .
while crossing Lake St. Clair
Over the course of our cruise, we’ve had a lot of comments about cruising with Sidonia. I have two things to say about the topic. First, she had her first accident, and it was on land! She was ashore, playing in some flowers and bushes. When I walked over to see what she was up to, I found her pushing sticks and sea gull feathers down an ant hill. I only saw one ant, so I didn’t give it any real consideration. As she and I started playing hide-and-seek, she spotted a bee. “Look Dada, bee,” she giggled. Then, I saw it. It wasn’t a bee, it was a yellow jacket wasp. As she put out her hand, it dove in and stung her right in the palm. She screamed and froze in shock and pain. The wasp came in for a second shot. As it turned out, it wasn’t an ant hill, but an in-ground wasp nest, and more yellow jackets began to swam. I ran toward her, grabbed her by the arm, yanked her up, and ran out of there, with Binga crying in pain and flailing around by her little arm. As I ran through, one of the little bastards nailed me in the knee. Vanessa heard the crying and came on deck, assuming someone was getting scolded. Instead, she found two injured sailors running toward the safety of our boat. I suppose the point I’m trying to make is there are just as many or more dangers on land as there are on board, but we all survive anyway.
John G. Leitch steaming for Lake Huron
Next, I’d like to point out we are not the only crazy ones to attempt this with kids aboard. At the Port Huron Municipal, we met another couple, young like us, who are cruising with two (yes two) small kids. Bob and Heidi are traveling with Charis (who’s three) and Cameron (who will soon be two) aboard their 50 foot racer. We couldn’t wait to spend time with them. First, to see people our own age doing what we are doing, and second to see a couple with a kids aboard to trade ideas and information. Binga got to interact with someone her own age for once. We only spent a little bit of time with them, but it was great. (Hey Bob and Heidi, call us or send us an email as soon as you get a chance.) I’m a schmuck and didn’t think to get a photo of us all. I would like to have proof there are others with kids out there.
Tuesday at 09:00, we returned to the St. Clair River and headed south. The river was basically ours to share only with freighters. The river current added 1.5 knots to our travel – fantastic! When we reached St. Clair, MI, the differential was 2 knots. The water driven speedometer said we were going 6.0 knots, while the GPS reported 8.0 knots speed over ground. It’s great, because our boat can not go 8.0 knots – it’s not physically possible!
Entering the Detroit River
There was very little wind and with the freighter traffic, we decided not to try to sail on the river. But when we reached Lake St. Clair, we set our spinnaker for more added speed and less motoring. Our trip across Lake St. Clair was a hot one! I still can’t believe the weather around here! I wish I had some good stories to tell about our crossing, but Lake St. Clair just isn’t that exciting. You kind of just sit and wait for Detroit to show up, and that ain’t all that exciting either. I guess the biggest thing to do is to try to stay busy. I’ve taken a lot of video and photos of passing freighters, but they are all starting to look the same. I’ve taken to playing with some of Binga’s toys, but I’ve also started talking is single syllable words and short sentences, so that isn’t working for me, either. I have a new found respect for Bing. She can make a good time out of most situations. Bing and I did finally have some fun, as half way across the lake, our friends the killer attack flies joined us, so we passed the time with the fly swatter trying to see who could squash the most.
River Rouge Steel Mill
Another View
The Detroit River finally arrived at 15:40 in the afternoon. Again, it was all quiet except for the occasional freighter and a few die-hard detroit sailors. Kind of strange, as we had expected much more traffic on the world’s busiest-per-tonnage waterway, when we actually had it all to ourselves. We continued south, along the river, to our planned anchorage. As it turned out, the anchorage wasn’t so great. It was in the river, very exposed, and directly across from the old Rouge Plant. Not a place where we wanted to spend the night.
Clean Air?
Bombed out remants of times passed
The River Rouge plant is currently a steel foundry type of industrial complex. Apparently, in its hay-day, freighters from the north would bring raw iron ore from Lake Superior and dump it on one end, then, after a whole bunch of manufacturing, a brand new Ford motor car would literally drive out the other end – sort one stop shopping for car manufacturing. As I understand it, the Rouge plant dates back to the time of Henry Ford himself, but no longer produces automobiles. As a mater of fact, it doesn’t look like it produces much of anything. It would be a cool movie set, though. I could never even imagine such a place. One other cruiser noted the similarity of the Mad Max films. The description fits.
Vanessa with Detroit in the background
Not wanting to spend the night breathing Rouge air or risking being run down by a big ship, we pressed on further south. We’d heard of a place to anchor off of Amherstburg, Ontario. It looked good and appeared to be off of the main channel, so we dropped the hook, ate dinner, and went to bed. Unfortunately, we were wrong about the main channel and all the freighters from/to Lake Erie use our channel, so we had a slightly noisy and bumpy night.
Lake Erie at the end of the channel
So, where is all this going? Just down the River and into Lake Erie. Unfortunately, even with the freighters, this is the place to be right now. Hurricane Francis (or what’s left of it) has arrived and is kind of stirring things up at little. We wanted to move out of the river today. Our weather window was very narrow. Using both U.S. and Canadian weather sources, we figured we would have a limited opportunity to enter Lake Erie and sail to Leamington, Ontario, where we would seek safe harbor and officially enter Canada. Up early this morning, we left.
Francis on the horizon, Lake Erie looking rough and grey
Lake Erie didn’t want us, not today. We set our smaller staysail and reefed out main sail. We were doing okay, figuring the winds out of the north would have little affect due to the protection of the north shore of the lake. We figured wrong. The winds were blowing like mad and the seas were building quickly. I was eyeing a point ahead that we were to round. I knew if we cleared that point, we would get creamed, so we tucked our tails under and returned to the safety of the river. Good thing we turned back, too, as NOAA Weather Radio was calling for 30 knot winds and waves 6 – 10 feet on the southern shore of the lake. We returned to our spot in Chrystal Bay, dropped the anchor, and are waiting for the remnants of Francis to arrive.
We are going to be stuck here for a couple of days, so tomorrow we will officially enter Canada down river at Duffy’s Tavern, the official port of entry in Amherstberg. When the weather breaks, we’ll begin our trek across the Lake.
-Steve