Middle Bass and Kelleys Islands, July 21-23, 2010

After spending a couple days getting work done on Kelly IV after Sean and Guy left, I finally had both time and weather to do a little sailing.  Given the forecast for winds to shift overnight from W to N, the anchorage east of Middle Bass Island (MBI) seemed a good place for a destination.

The breeze began light and out of the SW to W so I was able to raise full sail wing and wing for a drifting sail out of Sandusky Bay.  Thankfully there were few wakes to contend with as it was the middle of the week.  Once outside the bay, I set course on a broad reach towards the western end of Kelleys Island, passing the Marblehead Lighthouse to our port.  As Kelly & I sailed past Marblehead we sheeted in both sails for a beam reach until finally the wind gave up and we motored the last couple hours into the anchorage.

The temperature was very hot and little breeze so a cold drink and ice for the cooler seemed very important.  I assembled the Port-a-Bote dinghy then cooled off with an extended swim, checking the anchor and swimming back and forth between the dinghy and the anchor float, just to stay in the water and avoid the heat.  Once I was cooled off I spent the balance of the lazy afternoon reading in the shade of the bimini.  As the sun began its slow descent towards the horizon I worked up the gumption to climb into the dinghy and row ashore for the ice.  I had a long leisurely walk down the road and stopped into St. Hazard's, the small resort on the southeast coast of MBI.  After a couple drinks while absorbing the full brunt of their very large commercial grade fan on a stand, I collected the ice and got a free ride in their van back to the dinghy.

The forecast for Thursday was for light west winds building to 5 – 15 knots from the SW with overnight breezes expected from the SE to S.  In fact, the breeze never exceeded 5 knots and was so light as to make it difficult to even determine any direction at all.  I motored the short distance to the anchorage on the north coast of Kelleys Island, but killed the motor and set the sails just to spend more time on the water.  As it turned out I just spent 2 hours drifting ever so slightly to the NW, but traveling less than a mile for the effort.

Given the light air, I just towed the dinghy to Kelleys and rowed ashore for a walk and some ice.  In the past I had never actually been on the entire length of road from the “downtown” to the state park campground on Kelleys Island.  This seemed a good time to do that, so I walked the 2 miles and enjoyed the shade trees that line most of the sidewalk.  I stopped to take a peek into the new Kelleys Island Museum, but frankly my purpose was focused on the air conditioning more than the bits of history, so I continued on my way after a brief respite.  Once downtown, I enjoyed happy hour in a pub, then bought ice and had a cab take me back to the dinghy.

I used the CQR for my anchor and was glad I did as one of the “scattered” thunderstorms decided to run right over us.  According to the NOAA weather radio, a tornado warning was in effect for the small towns south of Sandusky.  Fortunately for Kelly and me, that was far enough away that we didn't see any effect from the tornado winds.  A Tartan Ten showed up in the anchorage escorted by the US Coast Guard soon after the rain started, but they didn't seem to have any trouble.  There was nothing on VHF Channel 16, so I assume that the USCG crew just wanted to be sure the Tartan made it safely.

The Tartan sailed out of the anchorage about 15 minutes before Kelly IV.  The wind shadow created by Kelleys made it possible for me to easily pull up the anchor without the aid of either sail or motor.  Then we sailed wing-and-wing on the southwest breeze which was blowing at a brisk 15 knots.  The breeze built gradually over the morning, just as forecast, so we were glad we left early before the waves could build.  By the time we made our first tack a couple miles east of Kelleys, the breeze was consistently at 18 knots so I tucked in a reef in the mainsail.  We sailed close hauled as Kelly tacked a couple more times, then I fired up the now-trusty Yanmar for the return into Sandusky Bay.

Anywhere But Kelleys!, July 16-18, 2010

Warren “Guy” Stewart and Sean Stull joined us for a “spur-of-the-moment” weekend cruise.  After perusing the Sailing Schedule for Kelly IV, I realized that we could fit in an extra weekend of Sailing!  A couple quick calls and Guy and Sean were signed up for a couple days away from the “real world” and off to a cruise in the western Lake Erie islands.

We bought our provisions and met at the marina on Friday night and stowed our stuff on board.  Saturday morning, Sean prepared a great breakfast of omelets and bacon and fruit then we let loose the lines and motored out of Sandusky Bay.  With the wind out of the SW we set our sails and had a great reach up the east coast of Kelleys Island.  Both Sean and Guy had sailed with us several times before, but both had only visited Kelleys Island, none of the others across the western Lake.  It became clear to the Skipper that our destination could be anywhere in the islands Except Kelleys!  Even after clearing the infamous “Kelleys Triangle”, we were still able to sail to the NW so we merely tucked in a reef (the breeze was about 15 – 18 knots) and sailed close hauled towards Middle Bass Island.  While Guy is a fine helmsman, he is just as happy reading his jewelry magazines and spending a lazy day on deck in the sun.  Sean took the helm and did a terrific job in the breeze as Kelly IV found her groove and streaked across the small waves.  The sailing was tremendous!

Our initial understanding of the overnight forecast was a south breeze clocking to southwest, so I thought we might anchor at Put-in-Bay (PIB).  We did our routine ice-pickup by sailing by the Boardwalk fuel dock, tossing them a few bucks and they throwing a few bags of ice on board, all without tying up.  Then we headed for the anchorage.  After dropping the anchor, it was clear that the wind was already significantly from the WSW or even due west.  We listened again to the radio and the forecast now said the overnight winds were going to clock from SW to NW, not a good direction for the anchorage at PIB.  We upped anchor and motored to the anchorage on the east side of Middle Bass Island where we were able to set the CQR on the first try.

With crew, the effort to assemble and launch the Port-a-Bote dinghy was easy and brief, so we were ashore soon after we cooled off with a swim and grabbed our wallets.  Sean and Guy were focused on exploring all there was to be seen on Middle Bass Island.  They were thrilled to have sailed to someplace different, someplace other than Kelleys!  We walked the length of the island past a community cookout at the Town Hall, visited Walleyes to see the pool and grab a bite to eat, then walked through the marina and campground in the state park and finally stopped at St. Hazard's for a nightcap.  The folks at Hazard's were kind enough to give us a ride to our dinghy in the free shuttle, so we were back on board soon after.

The next morning was a lazy one as Sean prepared another fine breakfast, Guy prepped the fixins for our lunch underway and we took another dip in the clear, cool Lake Erie waters.  We sailed off the anchor, but did need to use the motor briefly for a couple forward pushes against the 12-15 knot breeze.  We left a reef in the main and sailed off to the SE leaving Ballast and Kelleys islands to our starboard.  We tried continuing past Kelleys and pointing as high as we could, but there was to much south in the 15 knot breeze and our ETA was going to be too late for Guy and Sean to return.  We furled the genny and motored into Sandusky Bay.  Once there, we still had some time so we enjoyed close reaches and close hauled sailing back and forth until it was time to call it a day.  Guy and Sean fired up the grill at the marina and we had an excellent kabob dinner before they took to the highway for their return to the “ real world”.

Canada's Southernmost Territory, July 4 – 11, 2010

Jack VanArsdale, Bob Zimmerman, and Keith Otto joined Kelly IV as crew for our cruise planned for this holiday week.  The crew met at the boat for Sunday night so we could stow our provisions, relax and get an early start for the 50nm sail from Sandusky to Amherstburg, Ontario on the Detroit River.

Monday morning everyone was up at 6am so getting underway by 7am was an easy process.  We had breakfast underway as the seas were calm and the only cooking involved boiling the water for the instant oatmeal.  We set sail as we left the bay and headed WNW through the South Passage below Kelleys and South Bass Islands.  With only 8kt air out of the S/SSW we made about 4knots through the water until the breeze softened even more, so by the time we were sailing past Green Island, we started up the new Yanmar and motor sailed the rest of the trip.  There were two freighters in the South Passage, one anchored south of Kelleys Island, the other at the gravel pier on Marblehead.  As we turned NW towards Middle Sister Island and the Detroit River Light, we turned our binoculars to the west side of South Bass Island so Bob could see the Ship-turned-House on the northwest shore.  Unfortunately, the haze was so thick that the landmark house was just not visible from our position.  As the afternoon wore on, the number of boats in sight dropped to an occasional one or two, frequently well off into the hazy distance.  We were always in sight of some land, but mostly just a long, low, slightly darker smudge on the horizon.  Middle Sister island was a welcome sight as our course took us within a couple miles so the trees were clearly visible from Kelly IV.

Freighter passes Kelly IV as we enter the Detroit River from Lake Erie

North of Middle Sister we came alongside the entrance channel to the Detroit River and were soon followed by the two freighters we spied in the South Passage.  While riding the bow waves, we also were dodging rather large clumps of floating weeds, one of which actually almost stopped the propeller, but a quick shift to neutral let the folding prop close and the weeds slid off and all was well.  Once the freighters were past us, we focused on finding our way along the upbound Amherstburg Channel to our destination for the night.  After motoring for almost an hour, it finally dawned on me that even though our speed through the water was 5 – 6 knots, Kelly IV wasn't going anywhere near that fast over the ground.  Of course, we were motoring into a 3 knot current, so our true speed up the river was closer to 2 – 3 knots.  Soon the BobLo Ferry motored its way across our path.  This was our sign to hang a right into Duffy's Marina, our home in Canada for the next two nights.

Keith, Bob, Jack and Kelly IV in Duffy's Marina, Amherstburg, Ontario

Tuesday we played tourist and explored the Fort and town, learning the British and Canadian perspective on the War of 1812.  The gardens in the Navy Yard were beautiful, the townspeople very friendly, the displays impressive, and the speakers very knowledgeable.  The heat was intense, but the AC power in the marina kept the air conditioners on Kelly IV pushing the cool air throughout the boat.

Wednesday was our day to move on to Leamington.  You'll recall from our earlier report a month ago, that Leamington was hit by tornadoes.  They severely damaged two of the four major piers so half the floating docks at the Leamington Marina cannot support their boats.  All the seasonal slips were moved to the remaining piers and the number of transient slips is now only 10.  We called ahead on Tuesday afternoon and confirmed that the marina did in fact have a slip for us.  It was a beautiful, clear morning as we motored down the river, this time enjoying the 2-3 knot boost from the current as were we going with the flow.  We steered out of the channel as we cleared the shoals off Bar Point and turned southeast towards Colchester Reef.

With the light breeze out of the west, we set all three sails!  We had the genny on the whisker pole to starboard and the drifter and main off the port side.  With all three sails pulling we were making about 4 knots in 6-8 knots of air!  When we approached the Colchester Reef, we turned northeast, furled the genoa and sailed under drifter and main in the now 10 knot breeze air until we finally fired up the motor only 20 minutes out from our slip.  It was terrific sailing, making good time in calm seas and lighter breezes.  Fellow sailors are almost always terrific people.  Leamington sailors are no exception.  Randy, owner of “One Aye”, asked us if we'd like a ride into town, so we hopped aboard his SUV.

Keith enjoys the sail while viewing the sails and sky from Kelly's foredeck

As a realtor, Randy knew Leamington very well and was especially knowledgeable about the houses and the recent tornado damage.  He offered and we accepted his suggestion to take a “tornado tour” and he showed us what houses and property were damaged, including some homes with huge trees still crushing roofs down to the ground level.  Mostly the damage was very much cleared up, but the few exceptions were noteworthy.  The cleared areas with all their huge piles of logs and vast areas of open ground covered with sawed  off tree stumps made it obvious that the tornadoes had been absolutely devastating.  Unlike Toledo where several deaths were reported, we understand that no one was seriously hurt in Leamington, although there were many very close calls.

Jack steers Kelly IV to our next destination

Thursday's weather called for thunderstorms in the evening with the stronger winds coming from the north.  After some discussion, we finally set our course for South Bay, Pelee Island.  We've all had an interest in visiting Pelee Island, but except for my brief solo visit recently, our current crew had not yet set foot on Pelee Island.  Winds were light and from the SSW so Kelly IV was trimmed close hauled, but made little progress in the light air.  After a few hours we decided to motor sail and made the turn into the anchorage about 1730 hours.  Only an hour or so later a line of dark, threatening clouds made their way in our direction from the northwest.  Following the typical “calm before the storm”, a stiff breeze and rain blew through the anchorage, but the trusty 35 pound CQR anchor held us firmly to the bottom.

Jack captures Kelly's crew with his camera

Friday morning dawned gray and ugly as the forecast of rainy weather came true.  Given the forecast, another day at anchor, letting the weather blow through, seemed a good idea.  Soon after awakening, we were blasted with about 30 minutes of serious downpour.  The rain was so heavy that it burst right through the nylon tarp we had rigged to better enclose the cockpit and keep the drops from blowing down the companionway.  While the rain came down in huge drops, it came through the tarp in a heavy mist as the threads of the nylon material split the drops into a heavy vapor.  By 1000 hours the rain was gone and the sky to the west was clear, even sunny.

Assembling the Port-a-Bote dinghy on the foredeck

We assembled the Port-a-Bote dinghy and rowed into the abandoned marina marked on the charts as “Dick's”.  We estimated that the walk into “town” at West Dock was about 3 miles, so when we saw signs of life in one of the cottages, we found a friendly local who called a cab for us.  OK, they called The Cab, the only one on the island!  Moe, the owner and driver let us know about a few things concerning the island, like the Heritage Museum occupying the former Town Hall, but said we'd need to sign up for his 3:30pm bus tour to learn more.  Moe was very friendly, but being a good entrepreneur, was creating a curiosity in us hoping we'd buy into his tour.  As it turned out, we were more focused on enjoying the museum, a late lunch, and gathering a few provisions and ice. so we were late for his tour.

Swimming in Lake Erie south of Pelee Island, by Jack

Unfortunately for Moe, but good for us, no one from the ferry decided to take his tour, so he agreed to take us back to the dinghy and we collected our provisions and he gave us a mini tour as we rode back to the old marina.  The weather was now clear and sunny, even quite warm, so after we stowed the supplies and restocked the coolers with ice, all four of us jumped into the lake for a lazy evening of swimming, splashing and lazing about in the water.

Saturday morning burst upon us bright and clear with light winds forecast out of the southwest.  We had lost the anchor float sometime Thursday night and confirmed it while we were swimming.  Jack swam down the rode and there was no float to be found.  When we raised anchor Friday morning, the float line was still attached, but no float.  It must have come undone from the line after the anchor rode passed over it as Kelly sailed back and forth on her anchor.  We motored SSW out of the anchorage following a course I plotted that included a waypoint I had plotted a couple years ago using the chart.  As we continued on the course line on the GPS, we could see Fish Point looming awfully close to us, only a couple hundred yards away.  It dawned on me that we were going to run smack into Fish Point, so I reset the location of the waypoint and we changed our course to SSE until we cleared the peninsula covered with seagulls and their brilliant white-capped low limestone rocks.  Our course towards Put-in-Bay, the closest point for checking back into the US, took us almost due west, so we just motor sailed into the gap between Middle Bass Island and Ballast Island before turning south into Put-in-Bay.  Given the short distance we had traveled from South Bay, Pelee Island, we decided to try to do a little sailing, so we continued under way to a point just southwest of Rattlesnake Island and raised Kelly's sails.  Unfortunately, the breeze was so light that we merely drifted slowly south, then tacked to sail north and finally back SSE into Put-in-Bay.

Anchored below Perry's Monument, Put-In-Bay

 It did give us time to enjoy another leisurely lunch on the water before dropping anchor immediately below the Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial standing 352 feet overhead.  We assembled the dinghy, rowed into shore and checked into the US using the Video Phone at the public washroom in Put-in-Bay.  While the clearing-in took about 20 minutes, it was not difficult and there was no problem.  As all of us had visited the Monument and museum before, we decided to take a walk further south into the residential area just a couple blocks south of the “downtown” area of PIB.  It was a quiet, relaxing area with homes, B&B's and one larger hotel on the shore facing east towards Kelleys Island and Marblehead.  We rowed back to Kelly IV, just relaxing on board for the balance of the evening.  Just as we were preparing to hit our bunks for the night, we were commenting that the breeze had picked up a bit and was now blowing out of the SE.  As we looked around it became clear that all of the boats in the anchorage were shifting towards the SE in unison!  In fact, even South Bass Island was moving towards the SE!  Well, it finally crossed my mind that maybe WE were dragging our anchor as the rest of the world sat calmly around us.

Keith working the anchor on Kelly IV's foredeck,
to correct CaptMurph's dragging Danforth

After pulling up the Danforth and trying to reset it unsuccessfully, we switched to the faithful CQR and Kelly stayed put.  We finally got to our bunks for a well-earned sleep.

Sunday morning was another beautiful day!  We realized that we had been blessed with nearly perfect weather, having to sit through only one storm and a brief bit of rain during the entire week.  The breeze was light and from the west through the morning, so we sailed under jib & main back NE keeping Middle Bass Island to port and Ballast Island to starboard.  We dodged a huge fleet of fishing boats by gibing to head SE and continued sailing until we were almost past Kelleys Island and Marblehead.  The light breeze finally gave up so we motored into Sandusky Bay, topped off the fuel and returned to Sandusky Harbor Marina.

Peace Monument from east of Put-In-Bay, by Jack

Jack and Bob, underway

Keith enjoys sailing aboard Kelly IV

We had sailed about 140 nm over our week long cruise with stops in 3 ports at the southernmost point of all Canada.  The nearly perfect weather and great companions made for an excellent cruise, good sailing, a nice test of the new motor as well as providing us with a little touring and relaxing.

Ladies New to Sailing, July 2 – 4, 2010

Paula Browne and Sharon Stahl decided to see what their husbands saw in this sailing stuff.  Sailing doesn't require the same diligence to regular practice that Ollie and John spend on their musical instruments and probably doesn't have the same possibilities for romance that music inspires in the ladies, but for some reason their husbands get excited about spending time on an old hunk of fiberglass getting blown about by the wind and bouncing in the waves.

Paula and Ollie drove the skipper to Sandusky on Friday night and we prepped Kelly IV for our daysail on Saturday with the Stahl's who would arrive first thing in the morning.  John and Sharon were right on time.  We did a crew briefing so everyone was knowledgeable about the safety details, slipped the dock lines and we were off sailing!  The breeze was less than 8 knots out of the south-southwest, so we were able to run wing-and-wing as we sailed out of the bay.  There was the usual chop and wash from the myriad powerboats and my typical whine about how powerboaters seem to have no concern or understanding of the effect of their wakes.  But it also became clear that the five of us were enjoying each other's company and the ladies were happily seeing and understanding the smiles on their husbands' faces.

Apparently, most folks, including our novice sailors onboard, just can't help enjoying themselves when the sun, breeze, and boat combine to swoosh through the water without any seeming effort and very little sound save the water washing past the hull.  As we were daysailing, there was no need to press our efforts toward a particular destination, so we sailed where the wind was most fun.

John and Sharon reminded us they had brought the fixins for lunch so we decided to drop anchor off the hotel and beach on the Lake Erie side of Cedar Point and have our lunch there.  It turns out that the lunch was terrific and the water so inviting that John and I jumped off Kelly IV for a cooling swim.  Then we raised anchor and continued our lazy day of sailing.  The wind was still pretty light so we turned back into Sandusky Bay so we could enjoy some sailing on the bay north of the marina.  My thought at the time was the light air would limit how fast we could return when it was time to wrap up our day.  As nice as the sailing had been so far, we enjoyed a terrific, if unexpected improvement!

The breeze picked up and suddenly we were blasting along in winds of 10 – 12 knots in the perfectly flat water and brilliant sunshine.  The ladies were laughing and bubbly just like the guys!  We just couldn't contain the joyful exuberance that the sparkling spray, heeling blue hull and the bright airfoil sails pulled from our hearts.  Saturday afternoon was the perfect sailing day, especially when our goal was to help Paula and Sharon see what makes sailing so special to the men in their lives.

Paula

On Sunday, Paula, Ollie and I enjoyed a comfortable sail on Sandusky Bay as we had a decent breeze through most of the morning.  We sailed northwest until we were due west of the southern tip of Johnson Island, then we tacked and sailed towards the coal pier and back again.  Since Paula was new to sailing I was able to ask her the classic riddle:  “What do you call it when two sailboats are heading the same direction?”  Of course the answer is:  “A Race!”  With the nice breeze and clear day, Ollie and Paula tweaked lines and sheets to eek out as much speed as possible so that we could win our unannounced race with the 25 footer sailing parallel to us.  It didn't hurt that we were sailing a beam reach on a waterline 2 feet longer than our erstwhile competitor.

Finally, the breeze fell away to a rather light wispy nature so we topped off the diesel at Battery Park and returned to Kelly's slip.  We were pleasantly greeted by Jack VanArsdale, one of our crew for the upcoming week-long cruise that was to begin the next morning.  Jack guided us into the slip and helped us tidy up as the Brownes and I said our goodbyes.