Thursday 082015– in Leland, Michigan

Weather/Sea   Cloudy rainy, wind 20to30, temp 65 to 75

   Captain - John C. Kwak crew Chuck Livingston

If you are watching SPOT on my progress you may be wondering what we are doing. We are back in Leland at this time because the weather does not cooperate. We left Leland at 0845 heading for Frankfort 40nm away. The weather was predicted to be 10to15 in the morning and 15to20 in the afternoon. At first we had 10 to 15 and even sailed a little with the jib only. At 1000 the wind piped up to 30 knots and stayed there. The waves kept building and once we got around Pyramid Point, where they had a longer vetch, they got very large. We were guessing that they ranged from 5 to 8 foot.  The Great Lake waves are shorter and closer together than Ocean waves. DUTCHESS would climb a wave and then plunge into the trough burying the bow. These waves slowed DUTCHESS down to an average of 4 knots, which meant that we might make Franfort by 2000. With the steady 25 to 30 knot winds the waves kept getting bigger all the time. We made it about 1/3 the way to Frankfort and decided that was enough and turned around. Let me emphasize that DUTCHESS handled the seas very well it was the crew that could not stand the movement!

Just turning in these waves was hairy but we got around ok and then were moving and surfing down the waves at 7, 8,9 and even 10knots. We rolled out the jib and sped our way back to Leland where everyone was happy to see us back. We had them worried. What took us 3 hrs. into the wind, took 1.5 hrs. coming back. Of course since we were sailing so fast downwind the wind felt like it was only 15 to 20 knots.

We were back in the harbor at 1336 and tied the boat up very securely. At this time 1940 the wind is still howling 30 and is not expected to drop till tomorrow. We are in for a bouncy night and may have to stay here another day. Of course this is one of the more expensive harbors at $79.20/day. This is a Township harbor and not regulated by the State, and they are the only harbor for 90 miles. So we have no choice but to stay here.

I installed MICROSOFTS operating system 10 and now I am unable to load pictures into the blog. If anyone has an idea how to fix that please email me at  johncsykwak@gmail.com .