Today’s goal is to take the boat back to St Joseph. We are over 20 hours and we need the oil changed.
Sharon
has decided that Debbie will make the crossing with me from Pleasant Prairie Harbor to St. Joe’s and she will drive to St. Joe’s and pick us up.
So Debbie meets me at the house and I notice that Mikey cut the grass for me. Very nice. Back into Dave’s car with two bottles of wine. I parked in the wrong slip and they had to move my boat. So one for Dave and Lauren and one for the guy who’s space I took.
We see Dave and Lauren and prepare for the 79 mile journey to St Joe’s.
The chart plotter warms up and gives me the blue line to follow. It is calm and off we go. We are about 15 miles from Pleasant Prairie when we had a man overboard experience—my hat blew off. Throttle back and a rescue was made. The chart plotter took me right to the hat.
So Debbie wants to drive the boat. I give her some instructions and she takes the wheel. She has a hard time driving straight, she tries to chase the blue line and instead we go in circle. After about five minutes it is time for me to take over .We are about halfway across cruising at about 29 mph and the wave action picks up. With the nose lowered with the trim tabs, we are still bouncing. I throttle back to 19 mph and it becomes much smoother. There are rollers about two to three feet high, the boat handles them well.
About 20 miles off St. Joe’s I can see land, Debbie is sleeping, and the lake smoothes out, so I pick up speed and we are doing 40 mph.
We pull into Pier 33, off load the boat and it is picked up and taken inside for service.
About 20 minutes later Sharon pulls up and we go to lunch.
On the way home we stop at New Buffalo to walk around and Sharon and I see Dave’s brother, Rick. He keeps his boat in New Buffalo.
So after some street music we are headed back to Arlington Heights.
