"Peter Hendra" wrote in message
...
Enough said. I now understand.

I've seen old movie footage of the Russians laying railway tracks
across some lake in Russia (possibly Lake Baikal) but for me, to even
walk on frozen water in Beijing was initially a rather strange and
novel experience.

We left Turkey for northern Greece at the end of January 2004. We
couldn't understand why we never saw another sailboat until we saw a
Swedish boat when nearing Athens a couple of months later. The weather
was OK if you kept an eye on it but we experienced probably the worst
seas ever in the Northern Aegean - short and steep. Once, we were
anchored in an enclosed bay on the southern coast of Lesbos, had winds
of over 60 knots and raced on deck expecting the mast to have crashed
down only to find great chunks of solid ice from the spreaders on the
cabin top. If I translate that to your cruising area, I suppose I
wouldn't be too far wrong.

Thanks for educating me,
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! :-)