The cruise is over and we are actually glad





After a fabulous summer on the northern waters of the Great Lakes we are back at our new home base in Drummond Island, Michigan. As you may remember we elected to store our boat in the North Channel for the next few years to avoid making the long haul up and down Lake Michigan which we had done for the past four years. This was done primarily to save on expenses and wear and tear but more than anything to avoid the consistently problematic trip back down the Lake Michigan in August where windy conditions are almost always the rule. To validate that we are currently sitting at the dock in Drummond with 20-30 knot winds stirring up everything and would have kept us in a marina somewhere.

In any case our last week after leaving Little Current was very nice with six peaceful nights at anchor and only one night in a marina. If you look at the attached map you can follow the route we took. We resolved the water leak problem mentioned earlier but it will have to wait until next year to be fixed as a new part is needed. We once again hooked up with the cottagers in Hotham Harbor we met a month before and had nice but familiar anchorages after that. Based on the forecasted weather we decided to come back to Drummond a day early and are glad we did (see above). At out last anchorage we saw the Mergansers (ducks) that we had seen a month earlier and they were quite a bit larger and just about ready to fly. We also ran into a Loon pair that posed for some quick pictures. No fish (keepers) were caught but a lot of fishing took place.

All in all it was a great summer and we only have to wait 10 months to do it again. Haul out happened on 8/11 and we left the island on Friday. On our way back we have stops planned in Ohio, Washington DC, and Atlanta before getting home on 8/25.