2023 – Trip 16

Notable Places, Experiences & Events

There was A LOT of boat traffic – especially for a Tuesday morning.  It seems that the “calm” day brought out more boaters … it’s interesting to pass other boats in the channel and the harbor entrance.  We’ll see really friendly people, and others who are just downright mean … it’s really important to remember who we want to be (and imitate – #LiveLikeZeke)

We got out onto the lake with no issues, and put up the sail (again jib-only) right away.  It was a beautiful day – better than the day before.  We were really moving … we were headed directly for Chicago, and the city skyline was visible today.  It really is magnificent to see the large skyscrapers coming closer and closer … although we only went out 7.4 nm (there was still over 34 nm to travel to get to Chicago).

We saw a huge balloon on the water so Kyle steered us toward it, and Kara was able to grab it with the boat hook extended.  We picked up our 1st piece of trash on the lake (we did see 2 other floating balloons that we couldn’t steer toward), but we still felt good for doing our part to keep the waters clean … we’ll keep trying to pick up trash as we go along. 🙌  The key is not putting the boat or the crew in danger to grab it.

Of course, there was craziness coming back into the harbor … it was a beautiful day and if you have a boat, you should be using it!  It’s hard not to judge, police or complain about other boaters as we’re coming in, but people do some incredibly rude and ornery things!  

First of all, we were sandwiched into 2 very large, very expensive powerboats.  The 1st one basically cut us off to go in the harbor entrance, but it was a ~50’ Sabre Luxury Motoryacht – probably $1M+ … so it has a right to be rude?!?  

We had to go through its wake, and were basically in a bathtub sloshing back and forth, so the other boat, maybe ~65’ yacht – possibly a sunseeker, decided to slow way down to give us room … thank you!

We passed several boats coming out at the harbor entrance, and 1 that really didn’t want to give us room.  Kyle was pushed more to the starboard side of the harbor than we’ve ever been before, and he saw depths that we should’ve ran aground … THANKFULLY, we didn’t, and we didn’t hit anyone or cause problems … we’re really trying not to complain.  It’s just that it’s only our 2nd season out.  We’re really concerned about the depths in the New Buffalo harbor entrance and our deep keel … we don’t want to run aground.  If you do have a shallow depth, we don’t mind if you pass us on the starboard side – take the shallow side and let us sailboats and deeper boats pass in the middle, please … and THANK YOU! 🙏

Ok, if you are sick of hearing us complain about the boat traffic, we’re going to try to stop in the future.