Reentry

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September 1 – 3, 2026

We are officially back in the US. We entered a day earlier than we had planned as we were becoming uncomfortable with our anchorage. Turns out, we were on the edge of a shallow hump that kept us from freely swinging. We were bump up against this little hump as the wind tried to swing us around. We’d probably be fine, but it just did not feel right. So, we pulled anchor and headed 7 NM across the international border to De Tour Village. MI.

It was an odd reentry. We had been visiting Fort St Joseph Historic Sight in Canada. An interesting spot that was quite important to the French and then the British managing Upper Canada before and during the War of 1812.

There is not much of the fort left. This was part of the munitions bunker which was right next to the first bake house. Bad idea. Ultimately after the war of 1812, Britian moved their fort across the straight to Drummond Island. In the distance across the water is Michigan.

We were mostly there for birding, hoping to catch a bit of migration. We had planned to spend two days as there were several well marked trails as opposed to our rock scrambling over the past several weeks. Due to our change of anchorage, we only had one afternoon of birding. The staff were incredibly accommodating, allowing us to pull our dinghy to shore as there was no dock, talking with us about local birds, and showing the Fort overview movie just before closing time. Very typical Canada nice; what we had experienced for the past 77 days while in Canada. Friendly, engaged people happy for us to be there.

We crossed the border into the US and head for a pumpout at the marina before going to our slip. The guy doing the pump was not rude, just a bit gruff. It was hard to have a conversation as he was not engaged. Every time I said something to him, he asked me what I’d said. Ok, just not a talkative guy.

We headed to a restaurant for a late lunch. The staff were friendly, but all of the bar/restaurant talk was mostly grumbling and clearly folks who were not terribly happy. It was all complaints or just not like much of anything happening in life. We had experienced none of that in Canada. It was a big jolt!

Since then we have experienced folks being much friendlier and happier. Perhaps it was just us. It was a bit shocking though and made us want to turn around and run back to Canada.

Anchoring

It has occurred to me I’ve never talked much about anchoring and the process. Without getting into too much step by step detail, we pick a spot, thinking about 1) water depth, 2) winds and their strength and changing directions, 3) other boats, 4) the bottom and what the surface is, be it mud, rock, clay, sand, plant matter, 5) how much chain to put out given the bottom, wind and wind protection.

We then drop the anchor; I set an alarm at the instant we drop and then we let out typically 125 – 175 feet of chain. We slowly back up the boat to determine if the anchor has set; meaning it does not drag along the bottom. Usually it sets the first time, but we had one instance where we tried 4 times in different spots in an anchorage and could not get it to set. Thus, we left the anchorage and moved to another anchorage. Probably too much detail.

… but thats not what I came to tell you about. I came to show you a picture of the anchor alarm and then squiggle pictures.

Here is an example of our anchor alarm. We dropped the anchor where the little purple anchor is. The boat is currently where the big red boat is. The big green circle is how far the boat can move before notifying us. When it gets about half way through the dotted yellow line, an alarm will sound. The red line coming into the picture is our path to this anchor spot, the red blob is where the boat has moved and the blue line is our route to leave. The yellow/black dot is another boat near us. Although this boat had AIS (a system that ID’s boats if they have a transmitter), I can also overlay our radar onto the chart and then drop a pin where a boat is anchored. The Pearl are outside of our swing circle, so we are good. The little green anchor is a tool in our chart plotter telling us about expected wind directions and where there is wind protection. We were in this anchorage for two days, and the boat basically stayed in the same spot. The wind hardly moved and was consistent, but not very strong here, about 10 – 12 kts.
Some of our other anchorages. I do enjoy the squiggle pictures. We sat out a southeast wind of 20 kts for 2 days here. We had good protection and the boat hardly moved. You can see our route into and out of the anchorage. you don’t see the anchor alarm circle as this image was captured after we had left the anchorage. If I had not turned off the alarm, it would still be going, driving us crazy.
The anchorage we moved from as we were bumping against a shallow spot. The charts all said we should have had 12 feet of water. As the winds shifted, we found the shoal. We also found it coming back to Rincon in the dinghy. I noticed we were in 4 feet of water as we approached. I added the yellow/back note based upon that.
Another instance of waiting out winds from the northwest. When we anchored, there was no wind and we just floated around near the anchor drop. As the winds shifted and grew from the NW, you can see us moving back and back. Then we just hung there for 2 days. There is a little black dotted line and x behind the red blob. I added this as I was watching to ensure we did not pull back any further in our circle. We did not.

Now, there you have it. This last picture reminds me of a lobster; my Rorshach image. What does that say about me?

Living in the Clouds

Interestingly, my sister posted a comment to my last post suggesting a bit of melancholy. Yup, it was and is true. Fall can do that to me, but we have had 10 – 12 days of mostly clouds, rain and fog. We just spent the last 3 days in quite a bit of dense fog, entering and leaving our last anchorage using our chart plotter and radar as we could not in some instances see the shore. Our 2 ½ hour run today was completely in fog and I could not physically see the entrance to the marina breakwater until we were several hundred yards off of it. Luckily, once we entered the breakwater, I could see the docks and find our slip. I am a sun girl; that is what makes me happy. This much cloudy weather does not do me well.

Our closest neighbor in the fog. We rarely were able to see the shoreline from our anchorage.

We have been working to rise to the occasion though. There is a culinary school about 8 miles away in the town of Hessel. It is an inland water run so we decided to do it in the dinghy. The fog had mostly lifted and the run was only a bit cool, but OK.

See, we are smiling. It was not terribly cold, but of course it was 100% humidity.

The food was also quite good at the restaurant.

The fresh caught white fish in a Green Curry was outstanding, but we enjoyed all the dishes. It had been quite a while since we’d had a meal this good.

We also took a shorter dinghy ride into Cedarville. It turns out, it is mostly our bay fogged in as the fog had lifted in Cedarville and folks were mostly in shorts and T-shirts. Perhaps we have Joe Bstsplk or Charlie Brown syndrome. However, it did raise our mood taking these two dinghy rides and visiting both towns. I was sad that we did not do any trail walking. The reason we had come to this area was because there were lots of trails, but neither of us could get up the gumption to walk into a foggy forest where it might start raining at any moment. Surely would not be good birding.

Pulling the anchor in the fog. One has to trust their instruments to navigate. This was the first time we’d anchored in the fog and pulled anchor in the fog. We were not nervous, just paying attention.

It’s a Bugs Life

In general the bugs have not been horrible. Granted, I’ve had many, many bug bites, many quite itchy and annoying. I have had worse personal bug bite episodes however.

The worst part is the boat spiders. I’d forgot about this as they are much less common in salt water and if you are usually anchoring, you just don’t have this problem. This years journeys have taken us to many more marinas and walls where spiders are happy to join us. The spiders have a lovely place to make a web and then the other bugs fly by, and pretty soon the boat is a mess. One couple we know do nightly spider wipe downs and we’ve now heard of spider wands. I’ve started using a small brush that seems to work pretty well. Others say they leave the spiders as they keep the mosquito population down. I do not enjoy walking through webs as I move around the boat, nor the spider poop all over the boat, nor spider bites.

The fog made for wet webs and good photos of our new shipmates.
This guy thought it was OK to block the companionway. Do do not really enjoy walking through spider webs.
They are quite pretty though.
The spiders get into the lines and fenders as well. They are everywhere! We are making progress at getting rid of them.

Next Steps

We’ve managed to have a couple days of mostly better (sunny) weather and have crossed into Lake Michigan! We took two very short hops to St Ignace and Mackinc Island using the winds to our advantage.

It is about 8 miles around Mackinac Island. There are no cars (but electric bikes and 3-wheeled handicapped scooters). Made for a nice ride around the island. We’ve hardly used our bikes on this trip.
There is quite a bit of breccia (broken and recemented limestone) that makes beautiful hoodos and arches around the Great Lakes.
The waters in western Lake Huron are gorgeous. Very clear waters. It reminds me of the Caribbean.
As I mentioned, Mackinac Island does not allow cars. But, we’ve seen some big houses being built and I’m sure they don’t bring everything by horse cart. UPS though comes on the ferry. The truck moves to the dock, the packages are moved to a horse-drawn cart and the UPS delivery guy then travels on the horse-drawn cart to do his deliveries. Isn’t that a bit different!
Mackinac Island is quite the tourist haven. However, if you mostly ignore the tourist street with a multitude of fudge shops, there are good restaurants, Fort Mackinac, the bike ride around the island and lots of hiking trails in the the interior of the island which is mostly state park. A vew from the boat while taps played.

Today is a long run, in super calm, sunny weather! Jim loves it, I love it and the kittens love it, fast asleep in their favorite spots.

The skys were clear and the waters glassy calm as we passed under the bridge at the Straits of Mackinac, our entrance into Lake Michigan. 5 hours later, we are now hoping to make it to our marina in Petosky with no rain or other weather. It is now overcast with 1 foot seas. Winds at our back (good), but thunder storms ahead (they SHOULD stay south of us.)

We need to love the weather as we’ve got about 4 days of nice weather then a week of truly horrible winds where we’ll just hunker down and work on boat projects.

The Monarchs were thick at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. We did not pay the tariff to enter the hotel for a look see, but enjoyed the butterflies in the garden.
Jim checking the time in St Ignace after we entered Michigan from Canada.
A sobering plaque in the small community garden in De Tour. The garden was quite nice and allowed us to have a walk.

Comments

Reentry — 1 Comment

  1. I better monitor the weather closely when I pack to come to the boat…LOL, hoping for some of that sun as I too am not a big fan of days of fog