Stuck in Hammond IN

At Racine, we saw another boat just like ours -
48' CHB Seamaster. I estimate that there are only about
a dozen Seamasters and this is the 5th one we've seen

Weathered in at the absolute southern end of Lake Michigan, while the lake gets the last laugh.

We spent 2 nights in Racine WI and were too tired to even leave the marina.  But going through the Racine visitors guide, it seems to be a well-rounded city.  First, I note that it is the headquarters of SC Johnson (a family company), and its HQ building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Wright was a Wisconsin native & had close ties to the SC Johnson family, so there are several buildings/homes designed by Wright in the area.  Racine is also the HQ of Twin Disc power transmissions, so my boat transmissions must have felt all warm & fuzzy being so close to where they were born.

We had a one-day weather window on Monday, so we left Racine at sunrise for the 72 mile trip past Chicago to Hammond IN.  The lake was nice and calm, the best conditions we’ve had in the 5 days on the lake.  It was a blissfully uneventful travel day, so calm that we let “Otto the Pilot” drive most of the day.

The Chicago skyline was covered in fog & haze.

The seagulls started following the boat, which we haven’t seen happen for a couple months.  Then I looked up at the canvas which covers our flybridge, and saw the shadows of two webbed feet.  A stupid gull had actually landed right on top of the canvas.  I tapped the bottom of its feet, and all it did was take a couple steps forward.  I finally had to pound its feet before he (or she) decided to fly away.

We made Hammond Marina with no problem & topped off our fuel tanks.  Fuel is expensive in Illinois since they charge road tax on marine fuel, so the legislature can pay for all its bad habits.  This marina is just across the border in Indiana, right next to the Calumet River, which we will take to begin the inland journey.  We must take this route because our boat is too tall to take the Chicago River with its fixed bridges.  Even so, the lowest fixed bridge on the Cal-Sag Canal will give us only about 12” clearance (if the locks are maintaining normal pool levels).

And then the strong cold front came through.  Yesterday, winds were north at 30 mph, gusting to 40, and waves on the lake were 8-10’ with occasional 13’.  And there’s just a small breakwall between the lake and our marina.  I have 12 dock lines on the boat now, and it’s still rockin’ & rollin’ in the slip.  We started getting seasick on the boat & had to go ashore just to get away from the jerky motion.  Forecast for the next 3 days is for the wind to die to only 20-25 mph and waves decrease to 5-8’.  Yes, we will be glad to get off Lake Michigan.

So we’ll take our Dramamine & try do get some boat chores done while we plan our escape, I mean our departure!

Mean Lake Michigan

If anyone tells you that this lake kicks up after Labor Day, you’d better believe them!

We departed Sister Bay on Thursday at zero-dark thirty in order to combine two days of travel into one.  We went through Sturgeon Bay Canal, which connects Green Bay to Lake Michigan, and cruised about 55 miles on the Lake.  And wouldn’t you know that the winds on the Lake were from the east, seas were 1-3’ on the beam, so we rolled like a puppy most of the day.  After a 9-1/2 hour trip, after 92 miles, we made our marina in Manitowac WI.  We had already acted like tourists in Manitowac, since this is where our new prop shaft was machined, so we just stayed on the boat to rest that night.

Another early start the next day took us due south on the lake, which had winds (wait for it…) out of the east and beam seas at 1-3’.  We rolled again for only 5 hours until we made our marina at Port Washington WI.  This time we had enough energy to take our tourist dollars into town, first at a great meat market we had read about, followed by Sir James Pub which had over 700 kinds of craft beers, and finally a great dinner at the Port Hotel.  Port Washington seems to be an interesting town to spend time in, but we had a weather window to take, if we wanted to get to Chicago by early next week.

By next morning, the weather window had partially closed, so we waited till noon to leave, hoping to get a bit better weather.  Out on the lake, the winds were down, but the sea swells were STILL from the east at a good 3’.  This time, we rolled a good 30-40 degrees the entire day & had one of our worst travel days in years.  I had to tape closed all the cabinet doors on the boat, and also the refrigerator doors.  We had to hang on to something all day to keep from sliding off the seats.  Going below was a challenge, and going to the bathroom was even more interesting.  It was so rough that we couldn’t fix any lunch during the day, and I couldn’t go into the engine room to check the engines & fuel.  But, as they say, the boat took the rough seas much better than the crew did.  I told the Admiral that she’s really gonna miss Lake Michigan when we get into the calm boring river system next week.

We rode the surges through the marina breakwalls at Racine WI.  Since this marina is offering a BOGO for transient LOOPERs heading south, we’ll take them up on the offer.  Of course, the craft beer pub right upstairs from the marina office, might have influenced our decision to stay an extra night.

Tomorrow is our last weather window for several days, so we’ll plan to make the 72 miles to Hammond IN marina, which is right next to the beginning of the Cal-Sag canal leading to the inland rivers.  The forecast is FINALLY for SW winds, which is the normal direction for this time of the year.  I had planned for SW winds for most of our travel on Lake Michigan by going to the west side of the lake in hopes of getting on the lee shore.  But for the 5 days we travel on the lake, 4 of them had the east winds & waves, which is the worst we could have had.  “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all!”

No photos this time.  Just trying to get off this lake before the water starts to get “stiff”.

Two Good Things

Dining with our cruising friends from "Irish Lady Too"

….happened in the past two days.  First, we were finally able to meet up with our best cruising buddies from earlier this summer, Admiral Susan and Captain Kurt, from “Irish Lady Too”.  We originally met them way back at the beginning of the Erie Canal in Waterford NY in June and traveled with them for about a month as far as the Thousand Island area and Kingston Ontario.  We split up at that point and headed different ways, but monitored each other’s blog to see where we both were and what each of us was doing.  They ended up bringing their boat into Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin, about 30 miles south of here, to lay up for the winter.  They rented a car and drove up to Sister Bay to break bread with us, and to share some “adult beverages”.  It was really great seeing them again, renewing friendships, and telling each other one lie, er I mean sea story, after another.

Our other good event was completing the drive train alignment with the new prop shaft, and then taking the boat out for a sea trial today.  With a minor glitch, the sea trial went well and we accepted the work performed on the boat.  That means that we will FINALLY say goodby to Sister Bay & point the bow south tomorrow morning.  We’ll try to make Chicago in about 5 travel days (and hopefully zero weather days) by making some long travel days.

So the blog will continue when we have something to write about, but for now, as they say on the Navy ships, “Make all necessary preparations for getting under way.”

“Get out of Jail Free”

We feel like we just drew the winning card in Monopoly.  Installation of the new prop shaft went more quickly than I had planned & we might, just maybe, get out of here!

The boat was hauled out of the water yesterday morning with no fanfare.  Three 600-pound gorillas got the new 16’ long shaft hoisted & started threading it into the boat from the stern.  It went through the cutlass bearing on the strut easily, probably because I had a new bearing installed earlier this year & the new one was quite flexible.  But then they hit the cutlass bearing just aft of the stuffing box (which is probably original from when the boat was built 30 years ago).

With a lot of pushing & shoving, an ample supply of soapy water, and a few choice words of encouragement, the shaft inched its way into the boat.  As it progressed, one worker had to climb inside at the appropriate time to install first the packing ring, then the pillow block bearing, and finally the transmission coupling flange.  After a half day of fun and games, we had a new prop shaft installed.

Then our refurbished prop was installed, followed by the perpetual discussion of what order to install the two locking nuts (you boaters can relate to this).  I installed new aluminum anodes (for fresh water as well as salt water), took my photos, and by 3 PM, the boat was back in the water.  The process so far took about half as long as I expected.

Everything's so shiny, I hate to get it wet!

Today we allow the fiberglass hull to settle down after being in the slings for 10 days.  Tomorrow we do the final alignment of the drive train & sea trial.  After that, we can finally start heading south.  We’re hoping to get under way on Thursday, since the weather is looking good.  We plan to take 6 days to get to Chicago, and then we’ll head down the river system.  We might actually make New Orleans yet this year!

More Lemonade

So while we have still more time on our hands, we either drive a borrowed car or ride our bikes around Door County to spread around some of our hard-earned Yankee greenback dollars.  And we finally made it back to the restaurant with the goats on the roof.

This area was settled by folks from Scandinavia, so there are a lot of last names that are hard to pronounce.  One guy named Al Johnson (not Scandinavian) started a restaurant to serve Swedish food (which IS Scandinavian).  As a gag, a friend (?) put a goat on the roof of his restaurant, and Al decided that it would be a good tourist draw.  So he now has a grass roof, tended by 4-5 goats.  (We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.)  Oh, and the Swedish pancakes & Swedish meatballs are great!

 
 
 

 Speaking of food, at another restaurant we ate fried cheese curds as an appetizer.  Guess they have lots of cheese around here (as if we needed to be told about Wisconsin cheese!)  And of course, we’ve found several craft beer breweries in our travels, so the Admiral is happy.

 

 

 

As we see more of this Door County, we find that all the towns have a population of 300-800 year-round residents.  The numbers swell with summer tourists, who stop in a town to shop, walk up one side of the street and down the other, then drive on to the next town to repeat.  It is filled with restaurants, art & antique shops, and waterside “resorts” (small motels).  Now that we’re past Labor Day (the official end of summer in these parts of the woods), the towns are dead during the week, and jammed with tourists on weekends.

Another gorgeous sunset that we HAD to watch

And I guess the sunsets around here are the highlight of the day for some folks.  Last night, people were lined up all along the marina docks with cameras ready, sitting on blankets along the shore with their wine, and having sunset parties with their coolers and appetizers.  I’ll admit the setting looked nice, but some folks just have too much time on their hands.

Oh yes, I guess we still have a boat to repair.  On Thursday the boatyard loaned us their truck & trailer to drive 2-1/2 hours to Manitowac to pick up our brand new, shiny, 16-foot long Aquamet 19 prop shaft.  The yard was short on manpower, plus they offered to save us about $500 in transportation fees, if we picked up the shaft ourselves.  So Monday we haul the boat again to see how much fun it is to thread the 16’, 2” diameter, 300# shaft into the 1-15/16” hole in the boat.  I’m hoping it can be installed in 2 days, and then take only 2 more days to align & balance the drive train.  If all goes as planned, by the end of this week our checking account will be drained, our credit card maxxed out, and we will be able to leave Sister Bay.

Hey John, I think this Sister Bay Wisconsin has moved up to our most favorite place, even mo’ betta than Demopolis Alabama!

Making Lemonade

They say that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  We’re doing our best to add lots of sugar.

We've been living in the slings for 1-2 weeks.
Need to take a big step across to get aboard.

 

The new prop shaft is supposed to show up by the end of this week.  It will be over 16’ long & weigh several hundred pounds.  Should be interesting trying to thread it into the hull from the outside, all the way forward to the transmission coupling.  Then the drive system will need to be aligned and balanced.  Will take at least 3 days to do all this.  Meanwhile, we’re still living on the boat.  Most of the time, the boat is in the water in the haul-out slip, still in the slings of the Travelift, but at least we have raw water to flush the heads & for cabin heat.  Since the old shaft was cut out & removed, we had an extra 2” hole in the boat which was temporarily plugged with a short 2” stub.  But since it may leak, the boat needs to remain in the slings so we don’t go “glub glub”.

Sunset over Green Bay, looking out our aft sundeck


 

Looking at the winds & waves out on Lake Michigan, this is a great week to stay in port.  Strong south winds up to 30 knots are causing waves of 7-9’ with occasional 11’!!  Even an inexperienced Deck Ape knows that we shouldn’t oughta think about going out there.  But summertime is over, and the temps at night are going below 50 degrees.  The leaves on the trees have begun to change color, and by the time we leave (pun intended) here, we’ll probably follow the changing leaves all the way south (yeah, I know, but someone has to do it!).  We went out on the dock at night to see the bazillion stars (a “bazillion” is the size of the federal debt, but I digress).  I was able to see Polaris and the entire Little Dipper, which I hadn’t seen since I was a wee tyke.

We rode bikes over the weekend to the next little town north of here to see what there is to see.  This Door County peninsula, between Green Bay & Lake Michigan, is filled with beautiful scenery, high bluffs right at the water’s edge, small touristy towns & lots of restaurants.  There are almost no chain stores (fast food, grocery stores, hardware stores, etc) anywhere in the county, once you get north of Sturgeon Bay.  It’s definitely a summer tourist area, and becomes a ghost town during the winters.

One pleasant surprise is that we’re right in the middle of harvest season for all the different types of apples in the area.  And we’re just at the end of cherry season.  The other day we had to stop to sample different types of hard apple cider.  The next day, we had apple cider doughnuts for breakfast, and a piece of fresh cherry pie for lunch (yeah, I know, but someone has to do it!)

Yet this week, we plan to eat breakfast at the Swedish restaurant which has goats on the roof.  Worth a picture!

Did I mention that we're near the Green Bay Packers
& the home of the "cheese-heads"!?!

Moments of Sheer Terror

Boating consists of hour upon hour of complete boredom, interspersed with moments of sheer terror.  Sue had her moments of terror (again) on this past Monday as she lost power on the port engine just as she was trying to dock the boat.

We had a very nice start to the day, still at anchor in a beautiful bay next to a state park.  We departed late in the morning for the short ride to Sister Bay marina on Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula.  As Sue enters the marina & starts to make a 90-degree pivot into our slip, the port engine or transmission or prop or something quit working & she started to lose control.  Fortunately, her coaxing of the starboard engine, along with a favorable wind, led us to land against the face of another dock without hitting any other boats.  Yes, our voices rose an octave or two, and we had all of our hours of complete boredom erased in mere moments.

Sue is actually getting pretty good handling these emergencies, since this is the second time the port engine quit on her as she is approaching the dock.  The first time was 3 seasons ago in Panama City FL when the engine fuel pump failed & the engine became strangely silent.

The definition of a "bad day" is having TowBoatUS
tie to your port side!

So the next day, we make that fateful phone call to TowBoatUS, to come tow us to a marina about a mile away where we can be hauled out to find what the hell happened.  As the boat comes out of the water, we see that the port prop is still there on the shaft, but the shaft has moved aft about 4-5 inches.  Sure looks like a sheared prop shaft to me!

 

 

 

The port shaft (on the left) has moved aft 4-5"
compared to the other prop

The freshly cut part of the shaft (left) is compared to
the failed section of the shaft (right).  The dirt and
corrosion on the failed section indicates it had
previously had a partial failure.

On Wednesday we haul the boat again to begin removing the broken shaft.  Because of the location of the failure (inside the packing box), and other restraints (there ain’t nothing in boating that is easy), the 2” stainless steel prop shaft had to be cut into 4 pieces to be removed out of the boat.  Upon inspecting the location of the shear, it seemed that the shaft had developed a crack or partial failure some time ago, possibly years ago.  And it just decided to completely fail at this place at this time.  In retrospect, we think it had been ready to fail for quite some time (like when we’re inside the Welland Canal, or during one of our rare full-power runs).  At least it failed at low engine rpm, and seems to have caused no collateral damage, except to my wallet.

So tomorrow, we’re borrowing the yard’s truck to take the pieces and parts down to Manitowoc WI to get a new shaft made, to the tune of $3400.  It will take about a week before the new one is ready.  We had previously planned to spend about 4 days in Sister Bay, so now we’ll get our wish, and then some.  I guess that if you had to break down somewhere, Door County WI is much better than in the middle of Lake Michigan!

Into Wisconsin

Sue goes "swimming" in Lake Michigan!
With 68 degree water temp, she
didn't stay in the water long!

On September 4 we left our friends on Beaver Island Michigan & headed out onto the mean Lake Michigan.  The weather forecast was marginal for a lake crossing, but since we’re a big luxury yacht with a captain and crew well-seasoned, “the ship set sail for a three-hour tour…”  It’s beginning to sound like déjà vu all over again!

The winds were E 10-20 and the waves were 1-3’, but we found that was “normal” for Lake Michigan.  With a beam sea part of the way, we took some pretty heavy rolls and all the furniture inside the cabin started “walking” to the starboard side.  We also got into two areas where the overall major currents circling Lake Michigan were passing between Beaver and Fox Islands.  These strong currents opposing the direction of the wind, caused some turbulent water & “square waves”.  We had seen this situation several times before, but I didn’t imagine it happening on the Great Lakes.  It apparently is common enough that on the Wisconsin side, there is a passage between islands called “Porte des Morts” or “Death’s Door”.

Natural caves at water's edge on Washington Island

We made the 8-1/2 hour crossing to Wisconsin & anchored for the next 2 nights on the north side of Washington Island.  It was a nice remote cove among the water-side bluffs, but we had no phone or wifi service (yes, there are still some places in America remote enough!)  We anchored in 30’ of water (and let out a 4:1 scope!) because the bottom rises quickly from 150’ deep to the shoreline in only about 100 yards.

 

 

Warm weather on Labor Day weekend brings out
the masses!

Lots of visitors looking at "the big boat" at anchor

After two nights, we headed south to see if we could get into a marina for the upcoming cold front.  There was no room at the inn, so we went to Nicolet Bay on Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula to anchor for the night.  There we met up with about 75 other boaters, many many jet skis, paddleboards, kayaks, and hundreds of people on the beach.  Apparently this cove is not a secret any longer.  They were all enjoying the last weekend of summer with the warm weather.  I guess that’s what you do when you only have 3 months of summer (unlike in the Gulf Coast).  Folks were actually swimming in the 68 degree water!  Sue & I sat on the swim platform & dangled our feet in the water.  The water wasn’t too bad, after your feet went numb!

So Labor Day Monday, after all the locals head home to their J-O-B, we’ll go to a marina at Sisters Bay to sightsee around Wisconsin’s Door County.  Cruising guides say this is some of the prettiest country, so we’ll ride bikes around to see for ourselves.

Northern Lake Michigan

Crossing under the Mackinac Bridge, passing
from Lake Huron into Lake Michigan

We found out that most everything you read about Lake Michigan’s weather, turns out to be true.  It can change within a couple hours, and the seas can kick up from 1-2’ to 3-4’ in about an hour.  And there is pretty much constant wind of 10-20 mph.

We stopped for a couple days at Beaver Island, which reminded me of the Lake Erie Islands as they were 50 years ago.  Beaver Island has a colorful history, primarily because it is the only place in America which was in recent times ruled by a King.

It so happens that in 1844 when the founder of the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith, was murdered, one of his opportunistic followers named James Jesse Strang produced a questionable letter anointing Strang as Smith’s chosen successor.  This was surprising news to Brigham Young, who took most of his faithful to Salt Lake City.  Strang took about 2000 of his followers to Beaver Island where Strang eventually proclaimed himself King.  His kingdom lasted about 6 years as Strang continued to absorb more and more power, eventually considering himself above the laws of man.  In 1856, two men whom obviously disagreed with Strang assassinated him, and that’s the end of that story!

On September 3, we had planned to take a leisurely cruise south to Manitou Island, but this quirky Michigan weather had other plans.  Our forecast of SE 10 winds turned to NE 20, and seas 3-4’.  So we stayed in port all day & cancelled our plans (see how all that good Power Squadron training is put to good use!).  Unfortunately, we will not see the beautiful cove at South Manitou Island & mostly, we will not be able to meet up with my cousin Sandy & her husband.  They had planned to bring their boat to raft up with us for a couple hours.  BOOOO!

So tomorrow we’ll make the crossing to the west side of Lake Michigan & anchor in Wisconsin territory for a couple nights.  We’ll have to keep an eye on the winds and weather over there too, but at least we’ll have crossed the big lake.  I’m waiting for all the locals to have their last big fling during Labor Day weekend before I venture into their midst.  I’ve made reservations at a marina for Monday evening on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin.

At the local liquor store, the locals have a cold one