After enjoying some of the U.P. of Michigan’s Garden Peninsula, including South River Cove, Fayette, and Escanaba, as well as having anchoring issues at Washington Island, we wanted to head to the east side of the lake towards Lake Charlevoix. Unfortunately, the wind ended up dying off shortly after heading east from Death’s Door, and we motored in very flat water.
The passage from Death’s Door off Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula to Charlevoix, Michigan is a pretty straight shot, though we needed to be careful about a few obstructions mid lake, particularly South Fox Island and its associated shoals and bouys. Another obstruction lay only about a mile off the rhumb line and piqued my interest… the Northern Mid Lake weather buoy. Checking it out would only add a few extra seconds to an otherwise boring 70 mile passage under power. I’m up for checking things out on boring motoring passages… I had looked at a clump of grass earlier in our trip after all… excitement is relative!
Navigational buoys kinda all look the same (like road signs), so seeing one isn’t a big deal (from a tourism standpoint!). I’d never seen either of Lake Michigan’s mid lake weather buoys, though… they’re a long way from anything in the middle of the lake. Even though they’re removed in winter, I still imagined them needing to be pretty substantial to endure the storms in spring and fall. I also wondered how close they would lie to their charted positions since the mooring line would need to be pretty long for the deep water.
I set the chartplotter and autopilot to take us to the northern buoy’s charted location. A few miles out, I found it on radar within a quarter mile of the charted position. However, I couldn’t see it with the naked eye until about 2 miles out.
Some seagulls were hanging out on it, otherwise no one was around. Kristin thought I was crazy for bothering to check it out, but she still put her book down for a minute or so.
It was about 7 feet in diameter… a substantial enough metal object that I definitely wouldn’t want to collide with it! The chart said it was lighted, and though I saw a light it appeared the light would be obstructed by the solar panels for probably ⅓ of its azimuth. I wouldn’t want to get too close to this thing at night.
The wind and air temperature sensors were visible, as well as the solar panels, but otherwise, everything else was hidden. I know from weather reports it also senses water temperature, humidity, air pressure, and wave height.
We didn’t even circle around it. I slowed us down a bit, got these photos, and continued eastward.
