A Quick Sail Home

After a week of hanging out in Michigan, it was time to head home to “reality.” After two nights in Grand Haven, by Saturday we had a good forecast for getting home to Milwaukee: “East winds to 30 knots.” Yeah, that should be good for going west!

However, I’ve found the text based forecasts tend to overestimate the wind intensities, especially when the forecast zone is a very large area. In our case, the applicable forecast was the Lake Michigan Open Waters forecast, and the forecast zone was for the entire southern half.

In some ways, this overestimation is good… weather forecasting is still just an educated guess, after all, and if there are strong winds within 100 or 200 miles of us, we need to be prepared to handle them.

A check on SailFlow’s “Quick Look” forecast… very similar to NOAA’s graphical forecast in a more mobile friendly format… showed winds at nearly 30 knots at the far south end of the lake. For our routing, however, it looked more like a forecast of east at 20-25. So, we planned on sailing the 70 miles across the lake expecting 23 knots but ready for 30.

With east winds, we would have flat water initially, making things easier if any problems appeared immediately after raising sail in the strong winds. If we needed to return to Grand Haven or Muskegon it would be to windward, though.

We also considered how the weather would affect our arrival. With east winds, the entire Wisconsin shoreline would be a lee shore. Even if the winds and waves became huge, though, Milwaukee is a good port for entering in bad weather. It’s a commercial shipping port, and is protected by a large breakwall. Its large main gap is useable even in bad weather after dark.

…as long as we can steer. After recent problems with a steering cable, but our repairs worked well from Pentwater to Grand Haven. I checked the steering cables and fittings in Grand Haven once again as a precaution.

Prior to shoving off, we tightened our reefing lines for the first reef in the mainsail. I also reeved the lines for the second reef in case we felt we needed them. Trying to run lines through a mainsail in big wind and waves was not something I wanted to need to do mid lake. I also had our jibe preventer lines ready. We had jacklines set up, and wore life jackets and had tethers accessible if needed.

We cleared the Grand Haven breakwall at 9am Eastern, just as the Lake Express made it’s “Securité” call as it entered Muskegon’s breakwall. By 3 miles offshore the winds were around 18 knots ENE. With a single reef in the main and a partially furled jib, we were easily doing 8 knots on a starboard tack and very comfortable broad reach.

In less than two hours, we had covered 15 miles with 55 to go. The Lake Express was barely visible on the horizon as it made its way to Milwaukee. Gradually, the winds built to 24-26 (true wind speed) and the autopilot struggled somewhat in the higher puffs. So, we put in a second reef in the main. I’ve actually never really put a second reef in before (other than in good weather for practice), but it worked out fine.

The wind also shifted a little more east rather than ENE, so we configured for a downwind run. I set up the preventer line to hold the main to port, and poled out the partially furled jib to starboard with the whisker pole. Even with winds hitting nearly 30, and waves now over 5 feet, we were quite comfortable, and the autopilot handled the steering just fine. Actually, we felt somewhat undercanvassed with boat speeds around 7. I wanted more wind!

By halfway, the winds diminished to 18-22, though the waves had built to occasionally 8 feet. Occasionally we looked up at a wave crest while sitting in the cockpit. We were significantly undercanvassed, though, as boat speed dropped to 5-6 knots. After shaking out the second reef we sped up to 6-8 knots and comfortably continued to Milwaukee on autopilot.

The Lake Express passed us once again mid lake, headed east back to Muskegon. It would pass us one more time going west just prior to our entry into the breakwall in Milwaukee.

About 10 hours after sailing away from Grand Haven, we entered the Milwaukee harbor a little before sunset around 6pm. It had been a pretty quick trip, averaging around 7 knots.