Crossing the Big Pond a/k/a Lake Michigan
After reviewing the weather forecast, we decided to take a few days off at the end of last week. As it turns out, our friends were able to take off work as well – so we decided to load up the Ruff Life and head across Lake Michigan. We had great water on the trip across, so we headed straight to Charlevoix, Michigan, which is about 105 miles from Sturgeon Bay, WI. We stayed 2 nights in Charlevoix and then headed to Traverse City, Michigan, about 37 miles south. All was going great with the sun, the temperatures and no rain or wind! Our plan was to cross back on Sunday morning…however, the weather forecast for Sunday was calling for 3-5 foot seas come morning time, growing to 4-6 feet through Thursday morning! We decided to pull the plug on our adventure and cross back Saturday evening. The water was flat (the proverbial “calm before the storm”) and we had plenty of daylight left. All was going well, however, as we were half way across the Lake the engines shut down, the alarms were sounding and we could not restart the boat. Yes, it was very scary and not another boat in sight. We were able to override the alarm and get her moving again, but we clearly have an electrical issue that needs service – basically, the alarm was saying we didn’t have steering, when we obviously did. So, there is some bad communication going on between the engines and the monitoring system. We lost some time, and ended up racing some storms. We had some luck on our side as we dodged all of the lightning, and only ran into about 3 foot seas in the last 30 miles of the trip. We arrived safely at our marina at 11pm and I think we were all ready to kiss the ground! Here are some pics of our fabulous weekend (minus the scary part of floating around Lake Michigan with no power).
Laura washing the hardtop…Scot had sweaty palms watching me!
We ran into some fog, but this is the North Manitou Island…
Bloody Mary’s on the bow! Dogs are Lexi and Kiki – Kym’s Jack Russell Terriers
Notice we are not wearing winter coats!
Tall Ship! Just for you Ben…
My surfer dude…actually, I think he is laughing because Steve (our friend on board) is getting overserved…
Man down…while still sitting up…
Last picture we took while in Michigan..it is the weather radar…we are the little black dot under all of the green stuff. We barely got rain, but the wind kicked up the seas on the Lake …
