Wednesday, July 4, 2012. Alpena

This morning we left the Port Austin State Dock and traversed the thick weeds of the harbor with the jello-like feeling we noticed coming in, and I was happy to get into clear water! We crossed the northern part of Saginaw Bay to the west to Au Sable Point.

Crossing Saginaw Bay was the first time K and I had been out of site of land on either of our cruisers. We navigated with our MacENC laptop which has its own gps antenna, and we have two back up gps systems: the boat's built-in chart plotter and my iPhone Navionics system. We also had a portable Garmin chart plotter but it ran out of batteries and stopped working after a few days even though I plugged it into the cigarette lighter at the helm! In addition to the electronics I kept track of our position by dead reckoning, which means simply traveling a constant speed from a known position fix at a known course bearing. If you know how much time has elapsed since the last fix you know where you are. On this trip I used a kitchen timer and marked our position on our paper chart every hour. Electronics are nice but I really enjoy using paper charts and we had them for all the waters we traveled.

The water was smooth across Saginaw Bay and we turned north and went up the Michigan shore to Thunder Bay. Our stop tonight was Alpena, and the city is about 9 miles to the west from the buoy marking the bay entrance. We docked at the city dock, which is called the Thunder Bay Shores Marina. My cousin Shad lives in Alpena and we were anxious to see him and Anna. Shad took us on a tour of the town and his house. We were unable to see the Great Lakes Heritage Maritime Center in Alpena due to the time we arrived, hopefully we can visit next time we come by. Since it was the Fourth of July, a concert was being held outdoors by the waterfront. We grilled hamburgers and watched fireworks from the boat and had a great visit with Shad and Anna.

Pride of Michigan docked at Alpena

At 11:30pm a vessel pulled up to the docks called the Pride of Michigan. I recognized it as it had spent the winter docked at the Clinton River in Harrison Twp, using a bubble system to prevent ice damage. This ship turns out to be a former Navy training vessel which is now used by naval cadets with the Noble Odyssey Foundation. This is a non-profit organization which takes youth on 5-10 day trips to learn different skills. The group we saw was a diving group. Thunder Bay has a lot of wrecks and is known for its scuba diving. The ship Pride of Michigan was built in 1979, is 80 feet long, 75 tons displacement, and has twin rebuilt diesels. It is built of wood, and the cadet I spoke to said the bilge pumps are on continuously!