Good morning! I’m sitting at the table near the helm typing as the day begins to unfold. We’ve had several nice mild days in a row and haven’t used the A/C since we arrived in HS. Today is to be mild with highs in upper 70’s to low 80’s. We may take a run to Charlevoix today. Yesterday we motored around Little Traverse Bay.

Thursday evening we attended an event at the Little Traverse Yacht Club, met a few people, had dinner, and listened to three speakers tell their story of survival from the sinking of their sailboat during the 1985 Port Huron to Mackinac sailboat race. As they told their story I began to recall the incident. We were living in Union Lake, MI and radio station WJR morning host, JP McCarthy always followed this type of event. He and the Detroit newspapers gave this story high coverage. In a nutshell, the Tomahawk, a 35’ sailboat, got caught in a cold weather front beginning about 10 PM on 21 July 1985. That year’s race had the largest fleet, 305 yachts, racing the 259 mile course through Lake Huron. Head waves grew to 15’ and wind speeds were clocked up to 40 knots. After pounding through the waves there was a particularly loud bang, eventually theorized be to a stress fracture that created a hole or gash that was too large to be plugged. In nineteen minutes the boat went down in 48’ temperature waters, 280’ in depth, with air temp of 50’! Miraculously all hands were able to don their life jackets, broadcast a May Day distress call, and get into a life raft before the boat slipped beneath the lake’s turbulent surface. USCG had monitored the distress call and soon the cutter Bramble was its way to retrieve the sailors. The sailboat was never retrieved, in part because it’s too expensive to send a salvage team into nearly 300’ of water. That year, 96 boats dropped out of the race due to conditions and did not finish. The following year only 205 boats registered!

The LTYC is located in a cute house on E. Bay Street, just down from Walstrom and about halfway between the municipal marina to the west and Walstrom to the east making it a short and easy walk. It’s obvious to see that members have known each other for a long time. We intend to spend some time at the club and try to meet and introduce ourselves to as many people as possible before we move on.

We have decided we must move on this year, complete the Loop, and return MTB back to Chattanooga. This means we’ll be leaving HS around the third week of August and getting to Chicago before Labor Day and getting into the river system before the planned lock closures. Lock closures are from 0600 - 1800 hrs daily. Passages are prioritized to commercial vessels then pleasure craft. I would prefer to travel in regular daylight hours, hence our desire to move through these areas before the closures take effect.