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

We were hoping to see Harbor Springs and Petosky and run up the Charlevoix River but these will have to wait for another time. One deterrent for us was that in talking to Michigan boaters, when you arrive in the town, you stay at the marina, sometimes having to line up to see if you can get in as not all marinas take reservations. If not, you have to anchor in the main bay which in some cases is not well protected and not desirable in the predicted conditions.

But in addition, our talks with these lovely Michigan folks have led us to want to continue our tour of the area. The towns we have visited have been very interesting and worth visiting, with excellent marinas, many of which are State funded: what a pleasure it is to visit these facilities - we could take a lesson from the US on this one.
Maybe someday we will win the lottery and come back with a bigger boat that can withstand these conditions. We are already discussing coming back to do a road trip through this area.

So we asked ourselves - did we want to wait in marinas for a weather window to drive a fast several hours to the next town where there might not be dockage or did we want to return to Manitoulin and the North Channel and check out more anchorages? We postponed the decision and decided that we would arise at 5 am, check the weather radar and then decide. A note here that we use both Environment Canada and NOAA weather channels on the net for our radar and the best reports seem to come from Montreal River on Lake Superior. Knitted together with the ones from Gaylord, MI, we were able to get a quite accurate forecast of the storms.

By 5 am, the forecast had not changed, still to be lousy weather with a small good window just before noon. At 10:50 with a weather change, we left St. Ignace - making sure to leave before the ferries pass the marina with their large wakes - and followed our route back to the De Tour Lighthouse. About an hour and a half out - during which it was reasonably calm - the waves on Lake Huron started to build and they were coming from all directions. The wind was not very high so we found this interesting and not a whole lot of fun. Obviously the waves were being affected by weather conditions somewhere else and we were getting the end result - almost unpredictable I suspect. We had plotted a course to continue south of Drummond Island on Lake Huron and take the False De Tour Channel between Drummond and Cockburn Islands back into the North Channel rather than to repeat our route through the De Tour Channel but the wave action was getting rough so we opted for the De Tour Channel - the first chance to get out of the lake proper - and thence back into the North Channel of Georgian Bay, ducking into the islands north of Drummond Island and having a smooth trip along the north shore of Drummond and Cockburn Islands and then into Meldrum Bay on Manitoulin Island. As we approached the De Tour channel from the south, we were running parallel to three cruisers who were fast approaching on our port side. They were much larger than us so after they passed us we ducked in behind them and rode on the water which they had nicely flattened out for us.

We were about 4 hours en route with an average speed of 37kph. Passing the Drummond Island Yacht Haven, where we had previously been rained and winded in for 2 days, we saw at least 8 large yachts - including the three which had passed us - in line outside the breakwater waiting for space to get inside out of the wind and waves. This marina boasts that it never turns away anyone and I guess at times boats are tied up everywhere.

We wound our way through the islands of Potagannising Bay and along the north shore of Drummond on slightly flatter water. Whew!! Crossing the north end of the False Detour Channel we encountered wave and wind coming through from Huron before we passed alongside Cockburn Island which is largely uninhabited.

Meldrum Bay Town DocksIndians moved to the Cockburn Island Reserve shortly after the 1862 Treaty of Manitoulin which precipitated the move of some Manitoulin Indians to reserves. There was also a group of farmers called the Scotch Block - Scottish immigrants - who farmed for awhile here and income was also earned by being loggers in the winter or fishermen. By the early 1900s most settlers had returned to Manitoulin.

There is a lovely story in “The North Channel and St. Mary’s River” about Siberon Falcott Tolsma, from Michigan, who in 1877 began a fishery on Cockburn Island. By 1883, he had 17 buildings, a 220 ft wharf and had named the area Tolsmaville. One day William Mundy arrived; originally from England he had learned the fishing trade at Little Current and had decided to work for himself on Cockburn. This didn’t sit too well with Tolsma who, after some name slinging, told Mundy to get off his property. Mundy basically said “make me”! A fight ensued with Mundy being the smaller of the two men but he managed to put Tolsma flat on his back after three punches. No one knew that Mundy had been a boxer with the Royal Navy! Mundy stayed on the island and took up farming. By the late 1800s four lumber camps were operating on Cockburn Island and their wood went to the Drummond Island mill. The island suffered greatly during the Great Depression and is now a summer haven.

At the east end of Cockburn is the Mississagi Channel which funnelled even larger waves through from Huron and after several miles of this we were in behind Manitoulin. Although the wind was rising a bit we thought the ride was good compared to being out on Lake Huron on the other side!

Arriving at Meldrum Bay Marina we called in to Customs and were cleared easily - they didn’t ask about the fudge - and then we docked for the night. We are beside three large trawlers that are just completing a year doing the Great Loop. A lovely dinner was had at the Meldrum Inn, about the only business here in town, and we are off to get some much needed sleep. We will see what tomorrow brings.

Meldrum Bay Inn - a great place to dine

Location