Day 43 8/6/2025

Happy 20th Anniversary to us!

We woke at 5am and made preparations to get underway. The cats realized that we were moving again as Lucy went to her hidey hole and Casper laid in the case of water. I didn’t feed them their wet food as I didn’t think they would eat it.

Weather: Inside. Temperature L 68.2 degrees, high 84.7° current 72.7° humidity low 46% high 75% current 64%.

Outside weather temperature 69° mostly cloudy dewpoint 57°, humidity 65%, winds SE4M pH, sunrise 6:24 AM. No due outside. They are predicting some clouds mixed with a stray shower or thunderstorm possible. High 84° winds SE 5 to 10 mph, low low 63° with a chance of rain sunset 8:36 PM. On radar I see just some dots of rain just south of Toledo.

We are buddy boating today with Captain Dave Block on his catamaran. He arrived yesterday late afternoon and is in the guest dock. His boat speed is typically 6.5 kn conserving fuel when using the motor. Being a stiletto catamaran, he can sell much faster than us. He’ll sleep in and will follow us later and we expect that well. He’ll catch up to us late morning.

0553 start the engine, 0557 cast off. Waters are calm in the river. TWS 3.7 kn, TWA 162°. We are hoping for a good passage today. The wind is going to be from the SSE or SE off the land so that makes it calm water day on the lake.

0614 the autopilot stopped working. Resetting the breaker didn’t seem to work initially, but then it did start working again.

0626 we exit the harbor. 0623 we raised the main sale reefed. It’s cloudy outside and hazy. It’s hard to see Perry nuclear power plant a.k.a. tea kettle, but there is a little bit of pink guy breaking in through the clouds

Our waypoint is Avon point so as soon as we clear the harbor, we turned for that way point. COG 249° heading 3 to 1° true, SOG 5.9 KTS, BTW, 246° DTW 35.76 and M, ETA 12:46 PM

The lake is flat TWS 9 kn TWA 100° compass course 245 degrees, 0635 we let out the reef on the head sail. I routed it incorrectly along the mask, which makes it hard for the sale to expand completely. We’ll have to fix that sometime in the near future.

0655 TWS 9.1 kn, TWA 115°, COG 249°SOG 4.6 KTS, BTW, 246° DTW 33.89 nautical miles ETA 2:33 PM. By 0720SOG decreased to 2.7 to 2.9 KTS

0723. We started the engine and rolled up the head sail. The lake is still calm and we have a half foot swell and we are going down the waves. Shortly, after that I texted Captain Dave to update that we had past Mentor Harbor Yachting Club and he was under way.

0841. We passed East Lake power plant Casper was still clinging to the case of water so Lorraine put him on the V-berth to sleep and that’s where he stayed for the rest of the trip.

0935TWS 9.2 9TWA 116° TWD197° boat speed 6.1 kn. By 0952TWS client to 12.6 kn, not much change on the wind angle the boat speed was 6.2 kn and we had white caps on the lake though the lake was still pretty flat because of the wind direction. 0955 we let out the head sail, boat speed 5.4 kn. We continued to motor sale with the job out as there wasn’t enough wind to sail but we got a boost from the gym.

0949 We had gotten a text message from Captain Dave saying that it was windy out where he is east of us going 10+kts. he had to switch to the small jib doing 8 KTS and coming up to Euclid. I was able to see him in the distance south of us and then got the message that he got a job for the weekend was turning around to sail to Conneaut. He may come back starting Monday to go to the islands. Hopefully we’ll meet up again.

By 1048am TWS 13 to 15 kn, TWA 116°, TWD 199°. This is enough wind that the engine was off but 10 minutes later we had to turn the engine on because this was a brief time that we had enough wind to sell. By 11: 10 AM the wind had increased again to 12 kn and we turned off the engine sailing. But as time went on the wind gradually decreased to 10.2 KTS with ETA 3:30 PM, so we turned on the engine at 12 noon. Text message Captain Dave had lots of wind at Fairport Harbor in Eastlake and was making fast time to his end destination

12:55 PM we rolled up the head sale as the wind was 7.7 KTS TWA 95° by 2 p.m.. We were about 2 miles from our destination, the wind was flat so we dropped the main sail in the lake. By 2:22 PM we went through the inner break in the brake wall. And called Bob. He’ll meet us at the dock. It was a good thing. It seemed like the current pushed us into the bulkhead in the entrance, but the fenders I had put out protected at the boat. It’s an immediate left turn, which is hard for our boat to do cut the bow and push just around the corner of the dock. We were docked and engine off by 2:37 PM and tied up by 2:40 PM

Trip 47.1 NM

Phil called his sister Kathleen and let her know that we were there and 545. His sister Kathleen and brother-in-law Dennis arrived to take us out to Lorain Brewery for supper.   They had a patio outside to eat at, but it was really sunny so we sat inside in the bar room and had the window to look outside of. We had a nice dinner and enjoyed their company.

After we got home, we sat outside in the cockpit. We made calls trying to decide where to stay for the weekend. We were able to reach Kelly’s Island Seaway Marina. We were put on a waiting list for Friday and Saturday. We decided to look around at other places. There aren’t any slips available at Middle Bass Island State Park Marine at the reserveohio.com site, but there are slips for Sunday on. We looked at taking a dock at B dock at Put-in-Bay or picking up a mooring ball. We decided against the mooring ball as we aren’t sure the solar panels can provide enough energy for the refrigerator and not sure the type of alternator will work to charge up batteries. In the end, we got on the waiting list for a dock. Later we heard from Jen at Seaway Marina and they have a slip A55 available. The dock is 30ft long, so we’ll have to dock stern in. After thinking more, we asked if we could have A54 since with stern in, it’s a port tie up. Jen assured us that the dock boys can help and there is room to maneuver. We did make reservations for us at Middle Bass Island for Sunday to leave Thursday. With the Golden Buckeye Card, it was $54/day.

Phil was tired took a nap and then went down below. I stayed outside with the cats. About 9:25 PM the O’Day 34 sailboat on the other side of the dock from us came in from a race. Scott, the owner and other crew and I chatted. Lucy, like normal in the evening, was out on the boat walking around. She jumped off the dock. I retrieved her and we went down below for the evening.

We are at Kelleys Island with not good WiFi strength when I’m posting this, hence no pictures. I’ll add them when I can.

Update: pictures added.