Lessons learned Sept 14, 2014 43◦24'N 08◦621'.151W

We left Pentwater today around 0730hrs. I was much nicer then the day before and no rainbows; so I felt pretty secure.(see picc) Bad Mistake! When we got out into the big lake it was a little bumpy but nothing compared to the day before. Lake Michigan however had its own ideas about how our ride would be. Our original plan was to make it to Saugatuck which is about 70 miles run. About 1 hr into this run the lake started to churn. Waves where coming at us from two directions about 90^◦   apart so there was no escaping the beam (that's on the side) waves.  We got tossed around like a toy boat and there were no harbors for the next 30miles. Susan and Jeff where also with us and they where getting tossed around even more than we were.  It got so bad, that one wave actually toppled BBQ over. I did see some unbelievable staircases from house to lake (see picc) and some sand dunes that would make my nephew Serge drool (see picc).

    So here are the lessons learned. 1) If you have guest over the night before and you BBQ, make sure you tie that sucker back down again. 2) If you have guest and stay up late, DO NOT under any circumstances leave early in the am, before having washed dishes from the night before. 3) the chairs on the top deck must also be tied down before leaving. 4) Thank god every day that you had the foresight to exchange you designer dished for corning ware.  5) Putting beer cozies on all the wine glasses was NOT a stupid idea. Last but certainly not least 6) You can never have enough duck tape on the cabinets!

   After a 5hr run of rock and roll and crashing dishes etc... pretty much same old for us at this point; we decided to take refuge in White Lake.(see pics) So currently we are anchored in White Lake in an anchorage called Whitehall. We only travelled 38 miles today but as the crow flies it was only 30 miles. The extra 8 miles was us weaving in and out of waves trying to minimise the damage to interior contents. When we arrived here around noon, the lake was like glass, beautiful, but before long there were white caps on this lake as well. White Lake is a 6 mile long lake and like all others very picturesque. We anchored at the end of it, as far from the big lake as possible. We spent a little time cleaning up the mess left by today's rendition of rock and roll (although still not as bad as the 6 meter waves Simon is experiencing in the Grand Banks ) and then we took the dinghy into town to go check things out. We walked about 1.5 miles before we realizes; that grocery store, 1 mile away, was actually much further. We stopped and asked a young man about grocery stores in the area and he said "the other store would have been closer to your car". Seriously! Susan just told you we came by boat! Anyway we turned around and started walking back to the boat. When we arrived at the marina where we docked, I went to ask a group of people on a boat, were the nearest grocery store was. Note we had already walked 3 miles here and he directed us over the bridge; maybe another mile or so.  Then he offered to lend us his car. I say WHAT? This guy does not know us from Adam but here he was ready to loan us his car? I actually took him up on his offer and when I got back to Jim Jeff and Susan, they were all quite shocked. It was a nice Chrysler 300 so at least we were quite familiar with it. We brought the car to the local grocery store, got to check out the town's main claim to fame; which is the largest weather vane in the world (48 feet, see pic) and got to pick up some heavier items then we would have otherwise, like beer. We bought a nice bottle of wine as a thank you for the car loan and were back at our boat by 4:30pm.  We were all exhausted by then, so we returned to our respective boats and went for a nap. Latter Jeff and Susan joined us for dinner and we ended our evening just past midnight. Yes this would be the reason this blog was not posted last night and yes I do have a small wine headache. Today we plan on checking out the weather in the am and hopefully making it to Saugatuck  this time, but the weather reports do not look promising. We really are hoping to make it to Chicago sometime this year!