In mid June or so my Aunt Sue stopped by the house with an interesting offer. She and my Uncle Kurt had been planning a fairly unconventional trip for a while—a sailing trip which would take them through the Great Lakes, up through Canada, down into the Atlantic and south along the East Coast, and then further into the Caribbean.
While I couldn’t do the whole trip—it will take about a year and I don’t have the kind of funds to be gone for that long—I let them know that I could go for a month or two. Because it turns out it’s kind of hard to plan anything resolutely with sailing as so much is dependent upon the weather we eventually put a physical location, the city of Montreal, which I’ve been told by various reputable sources is in Canada, as my point of departure.
It’s been a little more than two weeks since we set out from Winthrop Harbor, a small marina a stone’s throw from the Illinois/Wisconsin border. The ship, named the Odyssey, is a 40′ sailboat called an Island Packet 380 built for ocean travel. Since we left we’ve gone through storms on Lake Michigan, rested in Boyne City, MI, sailed through the Northern Channel in Canada, and south across Lake Huron. We’ve stayed at the rustic town of Bruce Mines in Ontario and peaceful, idyllic, port towns such as Little Current on the Manitoulin Island. We’ve anchored next to an island full of rattlesnakes (no, we didn’t go on the island because it turns out that rattlesnakes are not to be trifled with).
Our itinerary is rather chaotic. Everything depends upon the weather, whether or not there is nearby a calm anchorage, and upon the sometimes exorbitant fees charged per foot by marinas to dock. At the time of this writing we’re resting in Cleveland, OH. Thursday we leave to head north, back to Canada, and through the Welland Canal and the industrial locks there allowing one to circumvent Niagara Falls.
The articles following this prelude will cover some of the aforementioned locations and others. It will also give some handy tips on murdering flies (before you say I’m callous: these flies are vicious, unrelenting, and they bite—they’re a bunch of shitheads), stories regarding a series of storms which caught us in Lake Michigan, where to get a drink and sing karaoke if you find yourself in Bruce Mines, and a heartwarming piece about mayflies and gnats. Other topics may or may not be written depending upon the mood and laziness of the author.
If you want to track the trip in real time and well after I’m back in Chicago, you can check out my Uncle Kurt’s blog at this link. From there you can view the entirety of the trip, track the boat, and correct me when I inevitably put the wrong name to some island out here in one of my articles.