Day 7: Grand Haven to St Joseph

It's a calm morning on the Grand River as we have freshly-brewed coffee and English muffins with crispy bacon for breakfast. The gulls are wheeling, squawking, feeding, and preening as we make ready to back out of our dock for an unremarkable day on the lake.

Today, the wind is off the land from the SE, so--to an extent--we'll be protected in the lee of that eastern shoreline. Still, Preston sets a course for Otto to follow that is basically a straight line to St Joe, so we'll run 65 miles today, about the same as yesterday, and the max distance we'll get out from the shore will be around 7 miles. The swell is soon up to 2 ft, but it's on our port bow, so the stabilisers cope well and our ride is pretty easy.

Preston has regretted to inform me that we'll be mooring up close to the (old) Pere Marquette main line, and we'll have a bit of Amtrak traffic to contend with. I promised him that I'd do my best to cope. Turns out there's only two Amtrak movements through town, anyway... a morning one outbound from Grand Rapids to Chicago and an evening return that comes through around 9:30 pm. I got a video of that tonight and I'll be looking for the morning one before we leave the marina tomorrow.

Preston and a young chap at the dock dropped the mast on 45 North this afternoon. That'll stay folded until we're well down the Illinois River. Rosie went for a walk and found herself in the St Joseph Yacht Club. The local manager was intrigued to have Aussie visitors and one (Rosie) who was a yacht club member in Australia (Sydney). So she and me took advantage of his invitation to dine there tonight, which we did.もっと詳しく