Lake Erie Sailing Trip - Day 8

Day 8 - Put-in-Bay and Islands Tour

We wake up at a blissfully late 6:30 am and get the eggs and toast cooking shortly after the first cup of coffee. The marina we’re staying at is called Portside and has a great location with a dockside bar and restaurant and just steps to the small downtown area. The one thing we have noticed is that people here are not quite as friendly as what we’ve experienced in the other locations on our trip. But we’ve seen this over and over again in the places we’ve traveled to. The more touristy and popular a location is, the less friendly the locals are. I think it’s partially due to them having to deal with all the bullshit tourists and transients throw their way. Smaller or less well known locations do not have as many outsiders who don‘t know or don‘t care about local rules and customs and are less worried about causing trouble since they won‘t be sticking around for long.

We spend the morning walking around town, visiting the shops and tidying up the boat. At noon we take the island ferry over to Put-in-Bay which is on Lower Bass Island, about 8 miles from here. Most Canadians have never heard of this place, or even this area of Lake Erie. There‘s a series of half a dozen populated islands that are huge draws in the summertime to boaters and other non-boater tourists. There are many marina and the tourism industry is very well developed. There is definitely a real Caribbean feel to the place, especially when it‘s in the mid 30‘s.

We spend about 4 hours in Put-in-Bay which is enough to have a good walk around town and a great lunch. We also found a brand spankin’ new tiki bar which had been built, complete with timber frame construction, thatch roof, palm trees and beautiful sand. Put-in-Bay has a reputation for being a hard partying place, but it seems that this does not hold during the week - on this Thursday the crowd was mainly older folks and families, not a drunken twenty something to be found anywhere.

We ferry back to Kelly’s, make a delicious dinner and sit back for a movie.  We've recently installed a 22" LED flat panel TV in the boat which provides for excellent movie nights, though I'm yet to actually stay awake for an entire movie.....