Our Sailing Mini-Cruise

After a few days working on our boat in Chicago Burnham Harbor, we decided we were ready to spend several days cruising around some of the southern ports of Lake Michigan. We pulled out of our home slip on, let’s see, um, well it’s hard to keep track of days when you’re on "boat time" - Monday maybe? 

Nancy all set to cast off 

Kent cleaning the cabin upholstery

And sailed 12 fun nautical miles toward the marina in Hammond, Indiana. We trimmed our sails to allow the winds to gently push us along and said happily to each other: “Ah, this is why we bought a sailboat!” It was comforting to find our same slip (we’d been there once before) and pull into it without difficulty. We enjoyed our night on the boat in Indiana even though we discovered that our restaurant (the main reason we went back) wasn’t open because it was, well, yes - Monday!  

The next day we sailed 26 nm to Michigan City, Indiana. Which actually provided us with 28 miles of sailing because we needed to keep tacking to stay on our course - nope, winds aren’t always favorable for the direction one wants to go. And this led to yet another adventure in docking in a new marina - and frankly we don’t really have our home harbor docking perfected yet! We enjoyed our overnight in this pretty port town. 

We even took time to hike along the sand dunes and out to the lighthouse the next morning.

Here's a view of the beautiful sand dunes along the Indiana/Michigan shoreline.
And also a view of how VERY FLAT the lake can be and how sometimes NO amount of trimming sails can help speed the boat along! :)

Yet then the winds were perfect for our smooth and glorious 7 nm ride to New Buffalo, Michigan, where it appears that part of the harbor master’s job is to help sailors pull into their transient slips - ah, perfection! What a sweet little harbor town, in spite of the interesting "duck weed" we encountered in the marina.

We were hoping for a 38 nm speedy return home to Burnham across the big lake. And by speedy I mean, well, all day! Indeed we left at 9 AM EST and pulled (rather successfully I might add) into our slip in Burnham at 5 PM CST. Ah, but so much better than a full day at work, right?! And what a sail for the approach to Chicago!

{SO SORRY - cannot get the videos to play on the blog - YET!}