BDofMSP
Guru
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2013
- Messages
- 905
- Location
- USA
- Vessel Name
- Gopher Broke
- Vessel Make
- Silverton 410 Sport Bridge
So I'm way behind on a number of posts that I've been meaning to send, but I thought I'd start by at least jumping on one of the topics - our summer vacation. This post isn't particularly interesting to anyone, but I've learned that the best approach is to just post it and the forum will decide if they're interested, so here it is.
We're on a 10 day cruise around Lake Superior's South shore. We left yesterday with the intention of hitting Ontonagon, Copper Harbor, Grand Marais, Pictured Rocks, Marquette, Houghton, and Black River Harbor. We have one guest who fits in perfectly so we're extremely excited for this extended cruise.
We left yesterday AM at 7 with one footers knowing it would be a tough slog expecting 2-3 by noon. Instead we got 2-3 by 10 and 3 regularly by noon with plenty of 4s in there, all right on the nose. It simply wasn't any fun at all, and a couple times it was ... eye opening. So I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and bailed to Black River Harbor, even though it meant having to pass it and tack back because otherwise we would have been taking them straight on the beam which needs no explanation.
We laid in at Black River and hiked which was beautiful, but the marina is closed for reconstruction, and had no power on the docks, so it wasn't exactly enticing to hang out overnight. By 5 PM things started to calm down, and Ontonagon was reachable within a couple hours if I was willing to spool it up, so that's what we did. We were able to handle about 15 knots in the better conditions and we made it into port around 7:30 pm. We were glad we did because it saved us a few hours of an already long day today.
One big lesson I learned from that was that, although I usually run 8.6 knots, I've always counted on being able to run faster if conditions made me want to bail out. Well yesterday I learned that by the time you realize you want to bail out, conditions may already be such that you're not doing 20 knots if you want to or not. Obviously i knew this, but experiencing it was different than knowing, and it was a good lesson. Another thing that I hadn't thought through was seasickness. Nobody had a serious issue during the trip but we didn't feel great and one of my guest got pretty sick once we made it to land. I thought hard about how difficult things would have been if I had a physically sick passenger, or been sick myself, during this and I was glad to learn the lesson that way rather than directly.
Today was a super easy, although long, run right up to the last 3 hours. Winds picked up and we had some tough conditions but they were following seas, so they were completely manageable. We're thrilled to have three nights here and we're going to try to get to know the town a bit before taking off on our next full day big water crossing from Copper to Grand Marais. Lessons from the past two days will be front of mind as we evaluate the crossing conditions. Last time I did this, it was delivery. This is now vacation and it needs to be treated as such. We don't need to be anywhere anytime soon, so we'll keep that front of mind as we plan the next moves.
We took a lot of pics and video of the waves and such, but they're not really as interesting as the reward at the end. Some great sunsets last night, and I know if there's no pictures, it didn't happen.
Happy 4th all!
BD
We're on a 10 day cruise around Lake Superior's South shore. We left yesterday with the intention of hitting Ontonagon, Copper Harbor, Grand Marais, Pictured Rocks, Marquette, Houghton, and Black River Harbor. We have one guest who fits in perfectly so we're extremely excited for this extended cruise.
We left yesterday AM at 7 with one footers knowing it would be a tough slog expecting 2-3 by noon. Instead we got 2-3 by 10 and 3 regularly by noon with plenty of 4s in there, all right on the nose. It simply wasn't any fun at all, and a couple times it was ... eye opening. So I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and bailed to Black River Harbor, even though it meant having to pass it and tack back because otherwise we would have been taking them straight on the beam which needs no explanation.
We laid in at Black River and hiked which was beautiful, but the marina is closed for reconstruction, and had no power on the docks, so it wasn't exactly enticing to hang out overnight. By 5 PM things started to calm down, and Ontonagon was reachable within a couple hours if I was willing to spool it up, so that's what we did. We were able to handle about 15 knots in the better conditions and we made it into port around 7:30 pm. We were glad we did because it saved us a few hours of an already long day today.
One big lesson I learned from that was that, although I usually run 8.6 knots, I've always counted on being able to run faster if conditions made me want to bail out. Well yesterday I learned that by the time you realize you want to bail out, conditions may already be such that you're not doing 20 knots if you want to or not. Obviously i knew this, but experiencing it was different than knowing, and it was a good lesson. Another thing that I hadn't thought through was seasickness. Nobody had a serious issue during the trip but we didn't feel great and one of my guest got pretty sick once we made it to land. I thought hard about how difficult things would have been if I had a physically sick passenger, or been sick myself, during this and I was glad to learn the lesson that way rather than directly.
Today was a super easy, although long, run right up to the last 3 hours. Winds picked up and we had some tough conditions but they were following seas, so they were completely manageable. We're thrilled to have three nights here and we're going to try to get to know the town a bit before taking off on our next full day big water crossing from Copper to Grand Marais. Lessons from the past two days will be front of mind as we evaluate the crossing conditions. Last time I did this, it was delivery. This is now vacation and it needs to be treated as such. We don't need to be anywhere anytime soon, so we'll keep that front of mind as we plan the next moves.
We took a lot of pics and video of the waves and such, but they're not really as interesting as the reward at the end. Some great sunsets last night, and I know if there's no pictures, it didn't happen.
Happy 4th all!
BD