The Captain's Logs are below.

Read the Crew's Views from John, KC, and Caroline as they reflect on their experiences in Asia.

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Greetings,

I know it has been a long time since I last submitted a log of Pride II's travels in the Great Lakes. To say we have been busy would be to state the obvious. Pride II and her crew and officers are always busy. But the business of being busy takes on new meaning when the ship is in port. Instead of being on call to the weather as Pride II is while underway, everyone is on call to the many missions of the ship when she is making official port calls. Besides welcoming the public aboard, hobnobbing with guests during receptions, sailing the vessel during daysails, and responding to the many questions about "who we are, what we are, and how we got here," there are the constant demand of maintenance.

But there is another demand on our time when in port. Seeing the sights! We get to do this during scheduled time off from our usual duties. Since time off is rare, practically everyone is motivated to get ashore and see the sights. Even the captain! So I apologize for the long delay I have created by indulging my desire of seeing the sights here in America's heartland.

How have all the past logs been accomplished with some reasonable frequency? They are usually written while Pride II is underway. Life underway is slower paced, so getting a log written between port visits is pretty easy to accomplish. However, the shorter the transit between ports, the less time there is to write a log. If the transit route is in tight waters, like the St. Lawrence Seaway or the Wheland Canal where the captain must be concerned with precise piloting and vessel traffic, the time available to compose logs is greatly reduced. That is exactly the conditions we have faced in the Great Lakes. But I am anxious to bring you up to day on our many activities, so here goes…

The Great Lakes

I last wrote as we arrived in Wyandotte, Michigan, in mid July. That was the beginning of three and a half weeks during which Pride II has constantly been on call to visitors, receptions, and sailing groups. During that time we have visited five different ports of call and sailed a distance of 638 nautical miles. We have hosted 12 open houses, 10 daysails, and 8 dockside receptions. This is a total of 30 events over 19 port days. However, during those three and a half weeks, it has not been work alone. Due to good sailing conditions early in the voyage, we managed to get ahead of schedule so the whole crew was able to take a day off together and traipse around the summer resort of Mackinac Island. As I look back over this schedule, I marvel at how all of it got accomplished. Yet the ship's appearance continues to improve as the crew manages to squeeze in maintenance time between scheduled events.

As you can imagine, the crew of any ship is vital to her accomplishments. Here aboard Pride II, the crew is constantly pro-active in taking care of her as well as the demands of her mission. Thankfully, not all crew members are needed to carry out all the events on the calendar. On a periodic and staggered basis, crew gets time off while the ship is in port. Time off is a function of the size of the crew. Since only half of the complement is needed to manage any of the events that take place aboard when she is in port, the other half can take time off.

After a long passage, such as our trip from Detroit to Chicago, the captain tries to get the crew some time off as quickly as possible. With half the crew always available, all of the demands made on the ship by the schedule can be accomplished. However, this is not necessarily the case for the captain. Of the three types of events I have referred to above (daysails, receptions, and open houses), the captain can only skip open houses. I must confess that I am apt to escape the ship when I can and leave writing the log for while the ship is underway. That strategy works when there is more than three days between stops. I guess I will have to modify my strategy.

Wyandotte, Michigan, and Lake Huron

Wyandotte is a small suburb of Detroit and is well known for its huge arts festival that usually is occurring when we visit. The folks in Wyandotte are great hosts and go out of their way to make the ship and crew at home. It is about a third of the way up the Detroit River from Lake Erie.

It is surrounded by heavy industry, especially the automotive industry, much of which we can see as we go up the Detroit River. With only three full days scheduled in Wyandotte, the crew got only one and a half days off. We hosted an open house from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. an evening social event from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. every day Pride II was there. Hence, little to no maintenance was done.

Organizations that charted the ship were Tate Access Floors, the Maryland Port Administration, and the City of Wyandotte.

Our transit from Wyandotte to Mackinaw City, located at the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, took us up the rest of the Detroit River and on into Lake St. Claire and the St. Claire River before entering Lake Huron. This means the first day was spent motoring against the river current as it heads down to Lake Erie. We all looked forward to getting into Lake Huron with hopes of reaching cooler climes. Another heat wave had arrived while we were in Wyandotte. Although it was not intense, there was high humidity — just like Chesapeake Bay in August.

While we rushed toward Lake Huron, we had a number of sights to see, such as Great Lakes cargo ships and many weekend yachters.

We also had five guest-crews aboard for the transit. The two Walton brothers, George and Vic, were aboard for their half-dozenth time. They brought their friend Tony, an ex-patriot Englishman from Connecticut, who has owned small vessels in the past. The last two were Gerry and Kim - a couple who knew of Pride II from Gerry's work with the Maryland Port Administration. This was their first trip aboard.

Once in Lake Huron, we found some respite from the heat. But we also found lake flies! This is a notorious beast that spontaneously spawns out on the lake whenever there is little wind and the surface is calm. While the below areas of Pride II were protected by our custom fitted bug screens, the deck was a beehive of activity as those on deck slapped away at the buzzy fliers. With little wind, there was not much sailing.

At one point, we launched Hippo, our outboard runabout, and everyone took turns seeing for themselves what a `painted ship on a painted ocean' looks like.

With the calm, we motored economically and got ahead of schedule. This permitted diverting to a quiet anchorage and taking some time to finish painting Pride II's hull. There was swimming too and even an opportunity to have a ship's company party as the sun set over Mackinac Island. The next morning, we hauled back the anchor and motored over and again anchored near the only harbor at that island. Then the whole ship's company took off to shore for some exploring.

Go to Part 2: Straights of Mackinaw
Jump to Part 3: Chicago
Jump to Part 4: Racine and Milwaukee