Great Lakes Sailing

7/12/08

Pike's Bay Slate Islands

Last night the wind began to howl initially from the northeast around 2230 bending the support pole for our bimini in half despite our completely protected position. Around 2300, the wind shifted to a basically north direction, but was shifting 45 deg. from side to side. This was particularly unnerving as we were basically being held by only one anchor and we were only a 75' or so from the shore. Naturally, it was pitch black, so there was no real way to determine if the shifting winds were causing our anchor to "walk", an experience that we've had before with Danforth type anchors. As a result, I stayed up staring at the chartplotter making sure that we didn't cross the electronic "trail" that the chartplotter made when we entered the harbor. By 2330, I was getting rather tired so I read the Nobeltec VNS Max Pro manual in order to determine if it has an "anchor watch" function. Even better, it has a "zone" function that will sound an alarm if the boat's position comes into (or in this case leaves) a pre defined zone. This zone can be user defined, so I defined a zone that I didn't want the boat to exit and layed down in the setee dressed "all standing" ready to go out in the blink of an eye if the alarm sounded. Around 0200, all hell began to break loose with thunder, lightening and heavy rain. I sat and watched the chartplotter some more; things still looked ok, but I wasn't yet comfortable with leaving things unattended completely. Deanna came out at 0300 wondering where I was and watched things until 0500 at which point the wind switched to the northwest and we seemed to by out of harm's way so we climbed into our v-berth. Naturally, about 30 minutes later, the alarm sounded and we both leapt out of bed like the place was on fire. Luckily, it was just a false alarm that occurred due to the wind shift but by this point, neither of us were going to get any more sleep.

Around 1100, the fog began to lift and the clouds began to move. Shortly thereafter, our friends in the s/v Peregrine raised anchor and were off on there way to Allouez Island. While eating lunch, I began to think we should be doing the same thing. We were scheduled to stay two days in the Slates, but we'd already seen some things by dinghy the day before and after all, we WERE a couple of days behind schedule already. This would give us a chance to catch up a day.

I shared my thoughts with the rest of the crew and they were more than game, however, by the time we ate lunch and got the boat ready, the wind was beginning to howl again, this time out of the southwest which would make exiting through the tiny entrance channel a really dicey proposition. I began to have visions of getting lodged in there sideways and soon decided that "patience would be the better part of valor" on this particular day. Later that afternoon, Stefan and I went out on a little tour despite the cool temperatures (upper 40's). There were whitecaps in the small bay just beyond the entrance to Pike's Bay and I was glad that we had decided not to move on.