Safe and Sound in White Lake

This first blog entry comes to you from White Hall Michigan. No, not the Virgin Islands just yet. Looks like we might be weathered in here for a day, maybe two as Hurricane whoever is spilling her (or his) nastiness upon the Great Lakes. Predictions for today are heavy south winds and storms and tomorrow is only worse with 25 -30 knots predicted from the North West which we all know means out of the due north! That’s ok. We’ve never been to White Hall and since this trip is pretty open ended a day or two anywhere is ok. We are pretty good heavy weather sailors as we’ve been caught out in some stink more than once but we don’t go looking for trouble!

This will give us a chance to take care of some unfinished business that cannot be accomplished so easily at sea. We have a hatch screen project to complete, this blog to update, some lockers need final (and continuous) organization. We left town without slide film and without extra propane for the grill so those omissions can be corrected.

So only two days but so far…

Enee is performing well. We sailed out of Burnham at 0530 on Sunday with a very pleasant south wind. This took us about half way across the lake when it began to poop out. We then motor-sailed toward South Haven. After listening to the weather we decided to curve north and change our destination to Lake Macatawa. We were essentially “across the lake” about 15 miles off shore. Might as well get some north while the getting is good.

We chugged into Lake Macatawa around 2300 and put the anchor down just north of the entry way in front of a little beach. We’ve anchored there before and it is just fine. (Anchorage is at 46 42.63 N by 86 11.8 W) That’s about 90 miles for a start. Not bad!

On Monday we slept in a little. Why not? We were (and are) still recovering from all the business of getting ready to go! We got going around 0900. The lake was choppy with (of course) a north wind. We tried to motor into it with the main up but the waves kept knocking our speed down to less than 4 knots. We tried pure sailing and tacking and although we were making nice 90 degree turns the speed we had did not warrant tacking back and forth all day. Finally with a little wind shift to the west and with full main and a little jib out we could keep pressure on the sails, the jib kept the nose down and relieved the hobby horsing and our speed went from 4 knots to 5.8! Some form of motor sailing was the rule for the rest of the day. While we could have pressed on further, we decided to get a look at White Lake. So around 1800 we pulled into White Lake. We wanted to anchor up in the north west corner called Indian Bay but the wind was south so we dropped the hook on the southern shore behind the rest of the sailboats from the yacht club. (Anchorage is at 43 22.02 by 86 24.29)

Many pictures below with their captions. Thanks to all who came to the party and especially thanks to all our dock friends who got stuck with our left over mess. Sorry Dave, only room for one case of Old Style! The knife is great! I already used it to cut a jammed reefing line. Who tied that granny knot? Looks like the lashings will have to continue until order is restored!