A Boating Mini Vacation

[RGrew176]

I traded work days with one of my co-workers so I could get 4 days off in a row. I planned to participate in 2 of my boating clubs activities.

The first one was on Wednesday something we call a Midnight Rendezvous. How this came to be was like this. Back when we were all still working at Ford we worked the afternoon shift. We got off work at 11:30 PM. We all would head to our boats and we would meet up at a rendezvous location picked by one of us. We usually met up shortly after midnight and would spend the whole night until sunup the following morning. We always had a pretty good time. When a couple of us joined the boat club we decided to bring this activity to our club the year I was Commodore, 2004. That particular year we had a 27 boat raft that lasted from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. Several other boats popped in and out over that weekend.

Many trips start out with a stop at the fuel dock. Here I put in $100 worth of gas. I am still running on last seasons fuel and I wanted to put in some fresh gasoline. By the end of this trip all that old fuel will be gone.



Passing by the Monroe Mi Edison Powerplant stacks.



The conditions on Lake Erie were wonderful. Less than 1' waves the whole crossing.

The Enrico Fermi nuclear power plant cooling towers.



The Sugar Island cut. On the west side of Sugar Island there is a rather long no wake zone. On the east side of the island the zone is much shorter. Because the opening between the island and the cross-dike is so narrow there is a strong current there. All the ripples in the water ahead of me are because of the current. I had to add throttle to maintain control of the boat and make headway.



Dunbar And Sullivan, the anchorage where we were going to spend the night. During the week it can be somewhat empty but weekends are definitely busy. Water temperature there was about 75* so I definitely jumped in to cool off.



Thursday morning dawned kind of cloudy and hazy. About 10 AM I left the anchorage and headed upriver. I throttled up to 1600 RPM about 7 MPH as I was going against both the current and the wind.



Downbound freighter.



The Ambassador Bridge between the USA and Canada. That is Detroit on the left and Windsor on the right.



The Detroit skyline.



The Windsor Ontario Canada skyline.



The Renaissance Center or what we Michiganders and Detroiters call the Ren Cen.



The entrance to the William G. Milliken State Park Harbor. This is the only state park in Michigan that is located in an urban area.



Evening at the marina, nice ending to a nice day.



The rest of the boat club arrives on Friday. If everyone shows up we will have 17 boats here. A fun time awaits.

[RGrew176]

This is a Google Earth shot of the marina.

[RGrew176]

Made it back safe to home sweet home port. The weather was challenging. I wanted to leave at 10 AM but there were thunderstorms popping up all over the area. Many of them on my path back home. Finally about 3 PM I checked the weather radar and the travel route from Detroit to Bolles Harbor was in the clear.

With some help from my friends in the boat club I motored away from the dock. I took my time heading down the river. I throttled up to 1800 RPM and with the current and wind at my back I was running a nice 10 MPH. As I neared the end of the Detroit River where it empties into Lake Erie there was a big black cloud ahead. I could see pouring rain in the distance and I verified that with a check of the weather radar on my smartphone.

I was down to a little over 1/4 tank of fuel so I pulled into Elba Mar Boat Club and put in $150 worth of gasoline. That stop allowed the rain shower in my path to pass by. After fueling up I headed out again and entered Lake Erie. Off to the west was some really dark clouds and once again checking my weather radar I saw a rather large thunderstorm mass west of me.

I throttled up to 3600 RPM and 21 MPH wanting to beat the storm and get to my dock before it hit. It was close but I managed to get into my dock before the rains began. It was the ending of a nice 4 day trip overall.

I am looking forward to August 8th. I will be heading out again this time on a 7 day vacation trip.

[RGrew176]

This was what the sky looked like as I pulled into port. The winds were starting to kick up more than they were.



As I pulled into the marina and headed towards my slip one of my fellow marina mates saw that I was singlehanding my boat and he rushed over to my dock to assist me. His help is greatly appreciated.