Day 76, Friday Sept. 6

Lift bridge at 6 a.m. as we are leaving Port Stanley

Well we are awake at 5:00 at the mercy of a fishing tugs wake.  The alarm is not set to go off for another 15 minutes.  We are planning on catching the 6:00 bridge as we have our longest distance to go today so far and don’t want to arrive in darkness.  Julie would be lying if she did not say she was nervous taking off in the dark.  There is visibility from all the town lights so getting out of the harbor should be fine.  6:53 is the time of sunrise today and we are still learning about the volume of light leading up to sunrise.  A mist of fog is blowing down the Kettle Creek river we are on.  Hmmm, hope it is not foggy out there.  We have wiped down the enclosure, however it is still hazy to see through the plastic enclosure.  We take down the front and back windows but leave the rest up trying to keep in some of the warmth.  We turned our forced air on this morning and the cabin is now cozy warm, but not for long as it will escape out the enclosure.

Sunrise

We round the harbor entrance and in front of us is a beautiful orange stripe on the horizon awaiting the sun to peak out.  We now know that on a clear day visibility is good 45 minutes before sunrise.  We will put that into our information storage lockers for later retrieval.  There are no boats in sight and soon we are motoring past the bluffs on the north shore of Lake Erie.  The wind is on the nose but light, preventing us from sailing without huge tacks and then we would not get in until nightfall so motor it is.

Big waves following us

After about an hour the wind has shifted so we hoist sail and are able to stay on our course with full sails.  We reduce power to 1200-1500 rpms and motor sail for the next 10 hours.  This is the first true motor sail we have done.  We maintained at least a 6 knot speed combining the wind and motor.  We had to keep a close watch as there were cottagers out in their small boats which were difficult to spot from very far away, especially with the sun in our eyes.  By 2:00 we were alongside Long Point and it sure is long.  It took us 2 hours to get to the eastern end of the point then an hour to get tucked in behind the sand spit, back in a westerly direction. 

We debated on where exactly to anchor.  Neither of us really like the spot, but then again we are very spoiled by the North Channel.  Here it is shallow for a long distance so we are a nautical mile from shore so most likely will not go exploring as we had intended.  On the charts it looked much better.  We are protected from the waves, but not very protected from the wind.  Hopefully the wind is gentle overnight.  It is supposed to stay quiet until at least 5 a.m.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson