Day 1 – Port Dover to Middle of Lake Erie
The annual Lake Erie boat trip is finally here, but this
year will be different as our ever present companion Andrew Holmes has moved to
Kingston and will not be joining us. Our
plans for this trip have changed several times, at one point we were planning
on exploring the east side of the lake and a portion of the Erie Canal but we
decided to once again hit the west side of the lake and venture into some areas
we have not yet seen, but also return to a few of our favourite places. Our friends Cesar and Kathleen were planning
to sail with us in their boat for the first couple legs of the journey, but at
the last minute decided to hold off and leave a bit later than us.
Our “final” plan was to leave Port Dover Friday evening, do
a 110 mile overnight run to the town of Erieau, then the following day make a
55 mile run to Pelee Island, where our friends Chris and Melissa (the daughter
of Cesar) would be joining us to spend a couple days on the boat exploring the
islands.
By 7 pm the boat was loaded, diesel tank was filled, holding
tank emptied and Port Dover was in our rear view mirror. It is always exciting leaving harbour on a
big trip as you really do not know what awaits you out there in that big lake. And yes, Lake Erie is a very big lake,
approximately 250 miles long by 40 to 60 miles wide, and known for its violent
and rapidly changing sea conditions when storms blow in. So we do not take this trip lightly, we pay
close attention to the weather forecast and avoid sailing when bad weather is
eminent. Though it was a wet and windy
day, the evening and overnight forecast looked pretty good with favourable
winds.
By dusk we had made it out to Long Point, at which point we
turned west and pointed the boat into the blackness in the direction of
Erieau. Night sailing is an amazing
experience and is much different than sailing during the day, and things often
are not what they appear to be, as we would learn once again. Shortly after rounding the point, we could
see what appeared to be a lighthouse ahead, very far off in the distance. I checked the chart and Erieau did indeed
have a lighthouse with a flashing light that matched what we were seeing,
except that it was 75 miles away. We
looked back at the lighthouse on Long Point, which was five miles back, and
blindingly bright, and decided that the light we were seeing must be from
Erieau. So we sailed on, headed toward
the lighthouse, which would make our navigation dead simple.
I went down below to grab a couple hours sleep and gave Ana
the helm. As I was getting ready for
bed, Ana called me up and said the light was moving, so I quickly returned to
the cockpit in time to see a sailboat ahead of us and maybe 50 metres off our
starboard side. The boat was bobbing
around in the middle of the lake with a single anchor light on, close to
nothing and right in our path. We
listened to the radio for any calls from the boat but there was nothing, so we
don’t know if they were perhaps asleep at anchor, or had boat trouble or
perhaps something else. But yet again,
we were fooled by the lights on the lake and completely misinterpreted what was
actually there. We were very lucky to avoid
a collision and can add this to the “lessons learned” section on our sailing
resume.
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