Renee dropped Emilie and me off at the boat this evening in preparation for our trip to Saugatuck. We plan on spending a week on the Michigan coast and I have been looking forward to this trip all summer. Emilie and I will make the crossing to Saugatuck and Renee and the other kids will drive over on Tuesday.

After getting the boat all ready and checking the weather forecast one more time, we decide to leave tonight. The trip should take about 12 hours which will get us into Saugatuck in the morning.

We left the Kenosha harbor at 8:45pm. 75 nm to the east through the darkness ahead lay our destination. The lake was calm, winds less than 5 kts, and the thunderstorms that had passed earlier in the day were far to the east and moving eastward, but the lightning was still visible in the distance. In hindsight, departing on my first long crossing at night was probably not a great idea. As the lights of the western coast of the lake dissapeared, I considered turning back. Ahead, I could see nothing beyond the nav lights on the bow. My eyes shifted back and forth from the compass and the horizon as I scanned for other ships.

As we motored eastward, the overcast skies finally began to clear and I was able to see a few stars. Then at 11:30 pm, the moon rose. Although it was less than half full, the small amount of light it reflected was very welcome. As the moon rose in the eastern sky, it was nice to have a visial reference to steer toward other than a compass heading. I began to feel a little more comfortable.

But as I neared the middle of the lake, with the depth finder indicating 500' and still slowly increasing, my imagination began to run away from me. Is there more water in the bilge than is usual? Is the engine running smoothly? Will fog close in on me or the clouds form an overcast and obscure what little view I now have? I even went so far as to worry about running into the mid lake buoy so I altered my course a few degrees south even though my original course would take me 3.5 miles south of the buoy.

Finally the skies began to slowly brighten, the depth finder which had bottomed out at 540' a few hours ago had been slowly decreasing, and with it my outlook was improving. None of the disasters I had previously imagined had materialized. Perhaps we would make it afterall.

Then I sighted land. Emilie had spent the entire night with me in the cockpit. Snuggled under her down comforter asleep on the bench, I tried to wake her to show her the approaching coastline and to congratulate her on our successful crossing. But she was sound asleep and did not even wake when I called to her.

But as we entered the Kalamazoo River and I throttled back the engine, she finally woke. We motored up the river about a mile to the harbor and our slip at Tower Marine. We had logged 75.2 nm, 11:15 minutes from coast to coast. Overall we had made great time and I was exhausted. But the adventure wasn't over yet... as Emilie and I secured our dock lines, I stepped on a board that hadn't been nailed down and fell into the water. No big deal except that my cell phone was in my pocket. So Emilie and I made our way into the marina office to use their phone so we could let Renee know we had made it.