Journey to Florida 2014: Lake Erie-Lake St Clair- Lake Huron July21-28

Well we're motor/sailing right along. We are now in Georgian Bay (Tobermory) and close to the end of this Journey. We have about 100 miles to go and we will be in Midland or Penetanguishene, where we will stay for the balance of the season, as we have some work to do on the hull. It doesn't make much sense taking the mast down and taking Indulgence to Barrie to return to the Midland area in a month.

This being said, I'll pick up where we last left off.
In Port Stanley, on Lake Erie, we finally picked up some NW winds, giving us a beam reach. We made some great speed and covered a lot of miles. From there we entered the Detroit River heading upstream and fighting the 1.5-2 knot current coming down from Lake Huron through the St Clair River and Lake St Clair. The toughest spot was when we were coming under the Ambassador Bridge. We pulled back so we could let 2 Lakers/freighters go under the bridge before us... no way I was going through with these monsters. For the next 3 miles we fought the waves created by these ships. The river has break walls on both banks so the waves just continued to go from one side of the river to the other. This with the downstream current, we didn't get too far too fast.
There is about 80 miles to travel between Lake Erie an Huron and at speeds of about 3.5- 5 knots this section took about 2 and a half days. There was more Laker/freighter/barge activity on this river than we saw in the St Lawrence when we came down.
One point of interest, is that we have never seen so many swans in one river in our life. Just south of Detroit there must have been around 100 swans..
Another interesting point was when we were entering Lake Huron in Sarnia, the current under the Blue water International Bridge was between 5-6 knots. We had to rev the engine at 2400 RPM and even still there was a section when we were only doing 1.5 speed forward. This section only lasted about 5 minutes, but here's where I wished I had a "Hunter (ouch)" and its oversized power plant to push us through.
Lake Huron
Lake Huron runs North and South and the current although not significant, the prevailing winds were south west and the water flow runs north to south. Lake Huron is 170 miles to where we are going to pick up Georgian Bay. There are very few (natural ) anchorage on the east shore of Huron so we've had to rely on Marinas. First we hit Bayfield ( crafts, arts, inns, restaurants), then Kincardine ( Scottish settlement, beaches, sunsets, bagpipes). Nightly in the summer months a bagpiper pipes the sun down from the top of the lighthouse, there is more to this story but suffice to say, it sure draws a crowd. Then we stayed at Port Elgin, the largest town in Bruce County. In between we passed by the Douglas Point Nuclear Station.'
Lake Huron boasts some of the greatest beaches (water was cold mind you) and according to the locals some of the most beautiful sunsets. As well the east shore of Lake Huron is peppered with hundreds of wind Generating turbines.
We are now in Tobermory, home of the CheCheman, the ferry boat to Manitoulin Island. This is one busy town with scuba and snorkeling tour boats, ship wrecks, Flowerpot island, glass bottom tour boats. A village built around tourism. One thing to note from our experience, it is one of the few locations we docked at, that the food store and LLBO were at the dock area, not 1-2 miles outside of town.
I will note that all the marina fees ranged between $1.00 and $1.80/ft. Most did not charge for pump-outs, but I just got dinged for $17.50 a pump out in Lion's Head. Ouch! and Double OUCH! $1.95/ft without hydro.
A favorable comment in defense of some of these marinas, most of them would drive you to town or get and pay a taxi for you to encourage tourism in their town, this certainly was a nice, unexpected service.
I'd be remiss to tell you that we have been inundated with biting flies and aphids on the water for 3 of the past 4 days.