Leg 4 of our 2022 sailing trip up north
(to read about Leg 3, Manitowoc to Frankfort, click here)
Thunderstorms and rain showers rolled through during the night and first half of the day as we lay at anchor on Betsie Lake by Frankfort. At one point there was a lot of cloud to cloud lighting nearby, causing the sky to flicker almost continuously in the middle of the night. On the Big Lake, the winds were from the south at a bunch, too… the forecast called for south at 30 knots during the day. Betsie Lake has some pretty big dunes or bluffs north and south, so we were partially protected, though the wind did swirl around a lot.
Because we didn’t want to deal with big thunderstorms and 30 knot winds on the Big Lake, we stayed put for the day. It was tempting, though… the big push northbound would have been nice, and it’s not something we haven’t done before. Breaking something on the boat would not be cool so early in our trip, though. Instead, we put the dinghy in the water, got a coffee in town, and did a grocery run. I tried getting carry out from a restaurant in town, too, but most were swamped and short staffed.
Waiting out the weather introduced another weather problem, though: today’s forecast on SailFlow called for north winds 10-15, and we wanted to go to Garden Island, 70 miles straight north. A compromise was to attempt to sail to Charlevoix, which was mostly northeast and a close reach. It might be doable, though there were hints of northeast winds in some of the text based NWS forecasts. The wind was supposed to diminish, and it was an otherwise nice day, so we headed out around 8am with a plan to sail… somewhere north? or northeast? Maybe?
Clearing the breakwall, sure enough we had north winds around 12 knots with some chop. We motored straight north for an hour to at least clear Point Betsie and charge our batteries. Man how I dislike motoring when there’s wind, even a headwind!
Passing Point Betsie, the winds built to 15-17 and shifted to northeast… where we wanted to go once again. We put a reef in and made our way up the Manitou Passage. It was a beat, but within an hour the winds moderated to a more comfortable 10 knot northeast breeze. I considered stopping at South Manitou Harbor, but it was early in the day and the east winds were sending some waves into the anchorage. (we’ve been there before, and it’s a cool place… I wrote about it here)
Passing North Manitou Light, I noticed the forecast changed slightly again, calling for a shift to north winds in the mid afternoon. We tried anticipating this by tacking earlier than normal, hopefully getting us on the north side of the course when the shift occurred. It sorta worked, too… we got about a 30 degree shift, making heading northeast almost layable.
We could have stopped in Leland, MI, but we still had time to make more progress east. Tomorrow’s forecast is calling for east winds, and the more east we are today, the easier it will be to sail north to Garden Island tomorrow. Charlevoix was too far in the dying wind, though, so we settled on Northport as our destination.
As boatspeed dropped below 3 and the sun got lower on the horizon, we motored the last two hours. The day was still a success… most of our mileage was still under sail rather than power. It was a lot of work, but we did get about 50 miles closer to our ultimate destination. We dropped anchor in the lee of Grand Traverse Point, near Northport, just before sunset.