The time came to cast off the lines and head out on the big adventure. I hate to admit it, but it was harder to let go of shore than I had anticipated. After 6 months of planning, preparation, spending, learning and fuss, there’s always this nagging feeling that you’re not quite prepared. In fact, we weren’t. We forgot a few minor things; The steak knives and wine glasses are still in the dish washer and the mosquitoes reminded us that we had neglected to put up some velcro to hold the screen in place. Minor indeed.
The forecast called for cloudy with a 30% chance of thunderstorms throughout the day. We were a bit “late” in leaving, although with lots of time for daylight, it would make our arrival time coincide with thunderstorm o’clock. The winds were beautiful and we carried 8-11 knots of apparent wind all the way from Goderich to Point Clark. They were from the south, instead of the southwest as forecasted so this made our trip slightly longer but this was just a niggly inconvenience. We worked our way out into Lake Huron, out of sight of shore, then back towards Point Clark. For some reason, we could achieve 4-5 knots on port tack, but 5-6 knots on starboard; I will have to sort out what I was doing inefficiently, downwind sail trim has always been my weakness. Approaching Point Clark was a bit of a pain as we could see the light house marking the dangerous, and only, navigational hazard on our daily run but the red marking buoy was nowhere to be seen. Feng, with binoculars, spotted it and confirmed it was precisely in the right location as set by my GPS mark. Fantastic.
The Coast Guard began sending up squall warnings and put out a severe weather watch for southern Lake Huron at 3:15pm, slightly before we reached Point Clark. As the wind died down on the east side, we decided we better motor sail for a while to add a little haste for port – we weren’t going anywhere fast anyway, so hey, why not?
Thanks to the motor-sailing ,we were within sight of Kincardine when we saw the wall of fog & rain approaching. Peddle to the metal, we headed in and grabbed our slip. My turn was less-than-sharp into the slip so it wasn’t a pretty docking with all eye’s watching. However, some friends we met in Goderich were there to greet us which was a nice welcome. The thunder started 30 minutes later and a slight shower rained down on us but it was more bark than bite. A big sound show with not much rain.
We finished off the day with some beers and dinner on the patio of the Bruce Bar (Bruce Steakhouse?) that overlooks the lake facing west… beautiful sunset.
I took only a couple photos of us out on the lake and neglected to bring my camera up to the Bruce Bar; I’ll have to post the photos later when I grab them off the camera.
Feng helps sail from Goderich to Kincardine