We woke up a little later today, which was a good thing after our late dinner out the night before. We went to visit Wade and his art studio which was very cool. He's a great artist and it was nice to be able to quickly catch up with him. Our friends from the night before were all around so we got to say our goodbyes and head out across the lake for our final trip.

Wind blew and blew all day the day before. Seas were again a little rough but not as bad because the wind changed direction during the night. We had a fairly short (4 hour) ride to Holland, MI - Lake Macatawa. This was a bit of a home coming for me. I spent a tremendous amount of time as a kid on Lake Macatawa. I had a few good friends that lived there, went to sailing camp there for a few summers, raced little sailboats in the bay and basically spent a good portion of my summers there until I was in high school. I have not been back there since probably 1987 or there about.

OK, real update this time. Around 2:00am last night, I woke up because the boat was rocking back and forth and there was lots of sounds of water hitting the side of the boat. After really waking up, I heard the wind. Since we were in a protected harbor and it was rocking this bad, I knew the wind must be howling out there - not good news for the lake. The next morning, we discovered what the wind had done.

After a great afternoon on Mackinac Island with drinks at the Grand Hotel and dinner at a local joint that specialized in whitefish, we woke up to a grey rainy morning. The excitement of the morning (other than Starbucks having no coffee) was the loss of one of our large orange fenders into the harbor. At some time early in the morning, it came loose and started to float away. To our luck, it got stuck to the inner wall of the breakwall around the harbor. We were not able to walk out and get it since the breakwall was not connected to land.

After a peaceful night in a deserted marina in Tawas, MI, we departed early for Mackinaw Island, MI. This was to be about an 8 hour trip so getting going before the wind picked up would help. We noticed last night that a bunch of bugs landed on the boat. This was only the beginning. The farther north we got, it got much worse. When we stopped for fuel about half way to Mackinaw, we were totally inundated with "midges". These are in the mosquito family but thank god don't bite: http://www.mosquitoes.org/Midge.html However, there are thousands and thousands of them swarming all over us.

After restocking on Liquor and then drinking what looked liked half of that, we got a late start. I actually got to sleep until I woke up on my own - which is now sadly 7:30am... Rob and Betsy came aboard at 8:30 and we got to the fuel dock at 9. The excitement of that was seeing what happened when the fuel pump hit $999.99. Sadly, it was programed to automatically stop at $950 so we were robbed of that small but interesting event.

Hopefully the last of the getting up before sunrise happened today. Here is the brief of the last 24 hours:

I am sitting in the sun on the upper deck as we very slowly traverse the Welland Canal. This is the major (and only) shipping route from the Great Lakes to the ocean. As a result, it can be clogged with large ships. Today, it is a little busy. We have taken on a 6th person for the trip - Wally - who is a local expert in traversing this canal.

We ended day 5 a little early so we had some time to make up on day 6. This day included the last 6 locks on the Erie Canal before entering Lake Ontario. A decent sized storm front moved into the area overnight - the same system that caused some sever weather damage to the midwest. This brought rain and heavy wind to our area this morning. The rain subsided around noon but the heavy wind continued until about 7:00pm. This kicked up some decent sized waves on Lake Ontario and brought out speed down. We hoped to make the entry to the Welland Canal.

I just spent the last hour literally updating today's trip here. Once I hit submit, it logged me off and deleted everything. I am sorry to say I am no longer in the mood to re-type the 5 paragraphs I just completed. Sorry. Pictures have been uploaded though.

Here is where we are tonight:

9:00am Update:
Getting up at 6:00am (4:00am my time) is not fun. Luckily, the real coffee has arrived. This morning we were underway within 20 minutes of waking up. So far, we are a little over 2 hours into today's journey and are 6 locks into the trip. These are pretty impressive locks - most of them taking us 30+ up with each lock. I'll have some great pictures of these when I upload later in the day. We have a few more hours of locks ahead of us today.

Update 1:
It's currently 7:50am (EDT) and I'm not sure what I'm more impressed about: the fact I've been up for an hour and half with no coffee or that I am a mile off shore cruising at 35 MPH surfing the Internet and uploading pictures.

We left Atlantic City at 7am and immediately hit open ocean for the trip up to Newark, NJ. After a short pick up there, we head back out and up to New York City and into the Hudson. I'm looking forward to that part of the trip - moving past NYC from the water.

A fairly non-eventful day. Woke up way too early after not sleeping well and drove our rental car to the Atlantic City airport while my dad and the captain took the boat to Atlantic City. We docked at the Trump Marina and spent the day walking the boardwalk and playing with Google Earth connected to my Garmin GPS. Every time I play with some Google project, I am impressed with how cool their stuff is. The boat has a full Furuno navigation system in it with GPS tracking but it lacks some of the cool layers Google lets you turn on.

Day 1 started with an early morning plane trip from Denver to Philadelphia airport. I met my dad at the airport and we drove to Egg Harbor, NJ - just outside of Atlantic City. This is where the boat yard is located. Day 1 was spent getting familiarized with some of the electronics of the boat. My dad spent time with the inflatable boat launch while I learned the satellite TV, XM radio and iPod entertainment system as well as the Internet routers. You can't make live television or go boating without the Internet anymore. What did we do before the Internet?

I'm embarking on a 14+ day journey to take a boat from Atlantic City to Chicago. This journey takes us up the Hudson River to the Erie Canal, on to the Great Lakes and around to Chicago. I've got my camera and will take lots of pictures and post them here. In theory, we will have Internet access for most of the trip.

Updates: http://wachs.org/blog/1
Pictures: http://www.wachs.org/gallery2/main.php/v/boattrip/