Hessel Michigan and the Les Cheneaux Islands

I awoke to Chris banging around the boat getting dressed to make his early morning coffee run. He is an early bird no matter how hung over he gets. He was looking pretty rough as he climbed over the side into the raft and rowed like a mad man for the Mackinac Island docks. That happens after a night of partying when you are in a boat without a real toilet on board…

I took advantage of the extra time to crawl up under my covers a little deeper and try to get a bit more sleep in hopes of outrunning the headache I had teasing me about that last beer I didn’t need the night before.

After a bit I was bump started to life by the sound of a caffeine and donut fueled madman climbing aboard. I am not a morning person. I drug myself out of bed and found some fresh clothes. The bar smoke on the clothes from the night before was so bad I had tossed them out on deck the night before.

We hit the raft and made way to land for some breakfast. Nothing cuts the morning fog like a big'o plate of greasy eggs and pig. We rode the bikes back to the dock feeling human again and while Chris babysat them I rowed out to get the boat and bring her in to load up the bikes.

We soon got them all lashed down and with a war whoop we headed off on our adventure. We motored out of the harbor with the music jamming loud and proud. The 1959 Johnson outboard ran like a top as usual.

Once we cleared the channel and got into the deep water I set the autopilot on a course straight over the horizon aimed for the cut that will take us into Hessel. There was no wind and the water was like a mirror. There was a light haze in the air letting the island fade away after a few miles.

We broke out the beer and relaxed on the bow hanging our feet into the cold water rushing by. About an hour or so after losing sight of the island the mainland appeared like a shadow in the haze off our bow.

Somewhere along the way Chris dug into the cooler and pulled out a butcher paper wrapped package all excited. He opened it up with an evil grin and produced the worst smelling chunk of smoked fish ever created. Even dead fish isn’t supposed to smell this bad. It smelled like a bad prom date!

I don’t do seafood or fish and he loves to find the ugliest stuff with gills or shells to eat just to watch me turn green. I’ve had to endure watching him eat raw oysters in every little crab shack and campgrounds bar from Daytona to Key West on our many Bike Week runs over the years.

The boat just wasn’t big enough for a smell that large. He giggled with a huge smile while he tore at it like a giant seagull all afternoon.

We finally spotted our first buoy and took the turn East for the cut. Before we made it to the marker we looked down into the crystal clear water to see rocks, lotsa rocks real close to the bottom of the boat. I ran for the back of the boat tripping and cussing and made it in time to turn us around and idle out of the reef's sharp teeth unscathed.

With our beers set down and our senses heightened we took a close look at the chart and gave the buoy a larger leeway and rounded up to the North into an awesome stretch of water. The scenery was amazing. After a bit we started to see local fishing boats and signs of civilization.

We caught a light onshore breeze and unfurled the jib for an easy sail up through the rocky cut and around to the marina marked by a huge sign on the harbor house that said HESSEL.

There was no answer back on the radio so we fired up the motor and slid in with hopes of finding an open dock on this holiday weekend. Come to find out all three of the transient docks were empty and only one is wired up with power.

We took it and tied the Warrior up ready to check out the small bunch of buildings that make up town. It was still early in the afternoon with lots of time to play. Chris broke out his fishing pole and played in the raft while I video taped everything like a kid with a new toy.

Eventually we walked the whole block to the other side of town to THE bar. It was a hole in the wall with a great bar burger. While there we met a couple that were in town on his hot rod Harley chopper. They were cool people. He said he brought her up there from wherever they lived to show her where he was from.

He had lived in the area from when he was fresh out of high school for twenty-five years and had just moved down state and met his soon to be wife. He wanted her to see the beauty of his home town. After a few beers we found out he “lived’ all those years in the prison nearby and was a convicted killer …

We staggered back to the boat after a few hours for some free beers and decided to row the raft out into the dark bay. We grabbed the life jackets, beer cooler and the video cam and headed out into the open water.

The local fishermen were all back on shore by sundown leaving us out there soaking up the pitch black tranquility all by ourselves.

The fog was heavy making it even more fun. We rowed way out not being able to see anything but the long row of lights illuminating the marina's breakwall.

We floated around in a drunken babble for what seemed like hours about a quarter mile off shore. The only light we had with us was a bright ass rescue strobe I kept on my life jacket. I tied it to the end of the dock line and threw it overboard turned on. The strobe lit up the water all around the boat making for a wild effect. We spent much of the night out there and never had another boat out there with us. We laughed as I videoed our slurred ranting and raving. We were having a blast. We were like little kids again.

We were joking about how crazy it was being out there in the fog with the marina lights as our only source for a bearing on which way was back. Then like we jinxed ourselves the lights all went off at once leaving us drifting in total darkness. It turns out that the lights are on a timer and shut off at 3 or 4 AM automatically.

Chris was on the oars and started to row towards the last direction we saw the lights. Somehow after what seems like forever we managed to keep enough of a course that we finally saw some lights from town.

We had missed the marina by a long shot but were close enough to see the town lights as we blindly rowed down the coast. We worked our way back to the marina before dawn. It was a great adventure and an outrageous video consisting of a black screen and us sounding like a couple of 12 year olds.

We broke every common sense rule and a few legal ones too but that’s what made it such an adventure in the end. For a few hours we were teenagers again! Not a care in the world living life for the moment.

We crawled back into the sailboat where I fired up the trusty electric frying pan and broke out another mess of beefaroni for the evening’s dinner while we wound down before bed. We slept like logs resting up for the next day’s adventures. We would be heading back past Mackinac Island to Mackinaw City and Chris’ van for his ride home.

Next Page: The Sail Back to the Lower Peninsula