You are probably looking at the above title and wondering what happened to the rest of Lake Michigan. Late last night the crew had a long meeting and a difficult decision was reached to alter our course from west to east. There were several reasons for this course change. After dinner, we gathered the latest short and long term weather reports for Lake Michigan, and it is not good. This morning there was a band of storms crossing the Straits of Mackinac with severe red cells and possibly hail and winds of 20+ knots. Winds to die down near noon. Overnight tonight and through Sunday the area is to receive several bands of storms with heavy winds up to 35 knots and thunderstorms and heavy rain and all sorts of other bad weather stuff that I won’t mention - old sailor’s superstition. This would mean that we would be sitting in St. Ignace for at least 2 more nights - Sat and Sun - through the storms. In addition to this, long term forecasts were for more bands of the same almost every day as this hot weather continues.

Lake Michigan is not a lake with a lot of places to hide and anchor, as in Georgian Bay’s many channels. That means that when you leave your dock, you must continue on your course until the next marina, in some cases they are 2-3 hours apart and there are not many “duck-in” places in case of conditions rapidly changing, which they are doing in this area. We are a planing hull boat, and should the weather turn windy with waves above about 2 ft, we become a very slow boat that must go up and down every wave, not skim lightly across the tops. We have had to finish several “runs” in 4 ft waves and we have no intention of putting ourselves in a situation where that may happen again, just because we want to get to a particular port.
Straits Bridge and Lake Michigan

Location