2022 North Channel Cruise Summary

Overall, this year’s cruise to Lake Huron’s North Channel was a great success!

Though we’ve been there several times in the last 12 years, we wanted to explore a bunch of “new to us” places. A little over half of the anchorages we visited on this trip were new to both of us, a testament to how many different places there are to go up there. Several new places are ones we’ll probably return to in the future… The Bustards, Hog Island and Fort LaCloche, and Keyhole Island near the Chikanishing River.

The places we had been previously were places we really like hanging out in anyway, such as Beardrop, the Benjamins, Maryanne Cove, Covered Portage, and Killarney.

A few statistics from the trip:

• We were gone 6 weeks
• 7 nights were spent in a marina
• 23 anchorages (some multiple nights)
• 925 miles round trip (maybe 950 with tacks)
• Easternmost point: The Bustard Islands on Georgian Bay
• Over ⅓ of the miles were with the motor
• 80 hours on the motor
• 15 hours on the generator
• 60 gallons of diesel
• 8 fuel/service dock stops (mostly for pump outs)
• $1300 operating costs (marinas, fuel, pump outs, etc.)

Having the spinnaker helped keep us sailing in lighter wind, especially during the deliveries to and from, but less so this year than I remember in the past.

Our generator use was slightly less than expected at 15 hours. We used it mostly for battery charging and heating hot water. Because I got a vacation slot more in the middle of summer than expected, we didn’t need to run the generator for heat like I’ve occasionally wanted in years past. We also didn’t need it for air conditioning that far north. In some ways having a generator is a frivolous use of precious space for a trip like this, but I installed it when we had more ambitious cruising plans that didn’t materialize.

In a way we were lucky with the weather, with only two really rainy and foggy days, and only one night of thunderstorms. The light winds were frustrating for much of the trip, though. We never used the second reef in the mainsail, and only used the whisker pole with jibe preventer twice (though I should have used the pole on our last leg home). Air temperatures were shorts and T-shirt weather most of the time, with chilly temps in the 60s when within about a day of the St Mary’s River. The benign weather meant we had very little anchoring drama, too, the worst of which was our shore tie situation in The Bustards. Even then, we took action proactively to minimize risk before it became a crisis. The good protection afforded by most North Channel anchorages also improved our luck with anchoring.

Posting to this blog has been fun, but it sure takes a lot of time! It did give me something to do in the evenings besides wasting time with downloaded movies or TV shows. It also ate up a lot of our Canadian data plan. On future trips I’ll probably post only every few days instead, though I guess it depends on where we go. (here is my first post, and here is my last post of the trip)

This trip was a good test of all the system upgrades I made to Priorities during the pandemic, including new refrigeration, a new generator, an inverter, an electric toilet in the forward head, a Satellite weather receiver, a new mainsail cover, and a rain shade over the forward hatch. To my amazement, we had no major mechanical issues, either, the biggest of which was only a broken dinghy prop just prior to our last leg home. Our inflatable dinghy and SUPs had some irritating leaks, too.

Priorities is a Catalina 400, and it remains a really, really good boat for Kristin and I to cruise the Great Lakes. This year we didn’t have any guests join us, and we’d prefer more company occasionally, but having just two of us aboard was very luxurious. With a fridge, freezer, 100 gallons of fresh water, two holding tanks, and 350 watts of solar, we were comfortable spending 7-8 days cruising between fuel dock visits. Our holding tank capacity still remains our endurance limit away from a dock, closely followed by our fresh water capacity, but this is rarely an issue on the Great Lakes. If pumping waste overboard were an option (the Great Lakes is a No Discharge Zone), and if we had a watermaker, we could go much, much longer between fuel/service dock visits while still being very comfortable.

Being away from home for six weeks is a long time to be gone during our wonderful summers in Wisconsin, so we don’t plan to make this trip every year. There’s way too many other fun things to do… not always involving the boat… in the summer than taking a long sailing trip. Work and vacation availability gets in the way, too. We plan to return, however, perhaps every three years or so.