On Sun, 25 Mar 2007 17:15:16 -0600, "KLC Lewis"
wrote:

Karin,
Beautiful country. I can't believe how densely populated it is.
Pleasantly zooming around on Google Earth clearly shows the glaciated
landscape. Are harbours such as Franfort free anchoring or do you have
to pay? I refer to the outer harbour as there seem to be many piles
in the inner one.

I had dreamed, many years ago of sailing up the Hudson/Eire canal and
down the Chicago Sanitary canal to the Bay of Mexico. I doubt now that
I'll do it but it is still tempting and I might still head north after
leaving Trinidad. Florida is only two weeks away.

The trouble with cruising is that you take much longer than you
planned as there are so many interesting places to side track to and
who wants to rush things.

cheers
Peter


Summers make up for it. We have such wonderful cruising grounds to visit --
several islands are within half a day's sail, along with several nice little
anchorages and ports. I can sail over to Sturgeon Bay and transit the canal
in about 4-5 hours, then sail overnight to the eastern shore of Lake
Michigan, where there are some fantastic little towns to visit like Leland
and Frankfort. Haven't done the "Crossing the Lake" sail yet, but it's in my
plans for this year, Insh'Allah.

Sailing north in Green Bay takes me to Washington Island -- wonderful
Scandanavian architecture, three harbors but two of them are very thin water
and one is very deep. Detroit Harbor on the southern end of Washington
Island is the best of the three (others are Jackson Harbor -- a tiny little
lagoon -- and Washington Harbor, which is 80 feet deep and rocky) but the
channel into the anchorage is very narrow and is bounded by sand/mud at
about 2-3 feet depth.

Further north takes us into either Little Bay de Noc to the west (Escanaba
and Gladstone, Michigan) or Big Bay de Noc further east. BBdN has a super
place to visit -- Fayette, Michigan -- which is an old abandoned steel mill
town which has been turned into a state park. The harbor, "Snailshell
Harbor," is gorgeous. Not huge, but it doesn't get a whole lot of traffic
except around July 4th week.

Can't wait to get sailing again! :-)