Long weekend and only 1 day of sailing

I was really looking forward to the long Labor Day weekend. I had hoped to sail from Waukegan to Chicago on Saturday (30 miles by boat), then sail up and down the beautiful Chicago Lakefront on Sunday and return to Waukegan on Monday. BUT, remnants of Hurricane Issac decided to visit the Chicago area on Saturday and Sunday bringing rain, big winds and big waves to Lake Michigan.

I went to the boat on Saturday with a couple friends in the hopes that the rain would hold off until late in the afternoon. It didn’t. It started raining shortly after we arrived. We sat it the cabin and ate lunch hoping it would pass. It didn’t. We called it a day when we heard a couple thunder boomers.

I went back to the boat on Sunday with my wife and another couple. The forecast was for big winds and waves 3 – 5 feet subsiding to 1 – 3 feet later in the day. When we arrived the waves were pretty big. We waited about an hour and kept on eye on them. They seemed to die down a bit (wishful thinking playing tricks on our eyes) and we decided to go out knowing it would be an exciting ride. We didn’t get far. We encountered a couple short frequency 8 footers pretty quickly, one of which buried the bow. We were getting pretty wet from the spray and decided to go back in.

Getting ready to head out

Almost cleared the marina's breakwater heading out

Got some white caps

Heading back in

My wife happy to be back in the marina

On Monday Lake Michigan calmed down. My brother and I went out with light winds and 1 -2 foot waves. There was a lot of pent up demand for sailing. I had not seen so many sailboats out at one time as on Monday. It looked like a sea of sails as we headed out. I made a bracket for my sport camcorder and hoisted it up the back stay. It wasn’t very stable. In the video from Monday’s sail I had to set the video clip to slow motion in order to keep from getting sea sick when watching it.