Harrisville by way of Hell I awoke to find out that the fuel dock wouldn’t be opening for a couple of hours so I had plenty of time to explore the city of Alpena. It’s an old city with classic Midwestern lines. A few blocks off the water I stumbled upon a small dinner lost in time. Feeling like a flashback from the late sixties, it was perfect for a quick shot of eggs and pig before sailing out of there. I took the scenic route back to the marina with a little time to kill. The old buildings were fun to look at and the public pay showers at the city park were defiantly a leftover from a bygone era. I strolled back to the boat right on time as the open sign flipped on the harbor house. I topped off my 6 gallon main tank and the 6 gallon reserve gas can I wish was full the day before. I checked the freshly posted NOAA The winds would still be out of the South but the waves would be minimal. Another 30 mile hop on the motor again. At least this time I was leaving with twice the gas as the day before. I hit the big lake at about the crack on noon and sailed east for miles getting out of Thunder Bay. Once I rounded the bottom of the bay I would drop my sails and motor south looking for a tiny freckle on the charts called Harrisville. I had never even heard of the place before so I was excited to see it. Below Thunder Bay the shoreline starts to smooth out. The Rocky islands thin out and the landscape becomes much more uniform. It was a milk run down the coast. The only obstacle on the charts was a pipeline running a couple of miles out from shore and a set of 4 buoys surrounding the outlet offshore. The info on the charts was sketchy so I decided to play it safe when I get there and go around the pipeline rather than risk sailing over it. All was going great! The autopilot was working like a charm, the sky was blue and the beer was real cold thanks to the fresh load of ice in the cooler. The day was awesome. I kicked back sipping on cold beer for hours. As the day went on the sky was filling up with darker clouds. Hours into the trip and I was making good time and loving it. After a while the autopilot seemed to start to struggle a bit. After making sure it That’s when I saw it…. One of the two pintle hooks that hold the 6 foot long rudder to the transom was splitting. The lower hinge was letting loose. Years of use had turned a small stress crack into a big pain in the ass. I watched in horror as the whole hinge broke loose and the rudder swung sideways into the spinning propeller! Throwing the outboard into neutral I heaved on the rudder with all my might lifting it out of the other pintle and eventually into the cockpit. This presented two immediate issues. The first was that struggle spilled my freshly opened beer, the other was I had no rudder to steer with and miles of water before I could find safety. I quickly checked to make sure it was a hardware malfunction and not a fiberglass issue. I bobbed like a cork in the choppy waves while I reviewed the charts and GPS. Harrisville was still the closest point of refuge. The boat was powered with an old 10 horse Johnson but unlike a fishing boat I could use it to steer but it required me to hang off the back off the boat facing backwards and look over my shoulder to see where I going. I rearranged the 6 feet of algae and funk covered rudder on the floor of the cockpit so it was secure, mopped up the spilled beer and opened another one before dropping the motor back into gear. I was once again chugging south looking forward to seeing the small marina even more now. In my target fixation of wanting to get the thing to a dock I kept finding myself subconsciously getting closer to shore that I like to run. I couldn’t let the motor alone for long because the wind and water chop would take it off course quickly. Every now and then I would check my course and my beer level. Way too often I would find both to be a little too shallow. After what seemed like forever I found myself in the dark and a mile off the mystery pipeline. Most of the pipe was in 10 feet of water and I had no info on size or depth of the pipe so the safe thing to do was to round it. I scanned the waters for the 4 large buoy’s lights shown on the chart with no luck. I would have to run blind and go by the coordinates I took off the chart and plotted on the GPS. I motored and motored without finding the buoys. It was dark and the lake was starting to kick up as a storm front I was worried that my chart work was off or the buoys may have been pulled for the season already. This prompted me to give the whole thing a little extra berth as a cold rain kicked in. With the seawall light in sight I finally had enough and turned for shore soaked and cold. I found out later that the whole pipe thing had been removed years earlier.... Two miles later I was turning south into the marine through a pouring rain. Inside the shelter of the break wall I found a surreal looking collection of fishing boats. Dozens of unlighted open top aluminum rowboats anchored in the rain all over the harbor with 1 or 2 guys hunched over under tarps in each boat holding fishing poles motionless. Some kind of fish was running and everyone seemed to have got the memo. The banks were shoulder to shoulder with fisherman standing like statues. I weaved through the maze of almost invisible little boats to the docks and picked an empty slip. I was so happy to be hopping off with dock lines in hand that the rain was fine with me. The Harbormaster had long since gone home so I had to stake out the locked bathroom waiting for a boater with a key to let me in for a much anticipated shower. I put together a simple dinner of assorted can goods before crawling into bed where I tossed and turned wondering how and if I could replace the rudder mount. I was hundreds of miles from home and thus too far to impose on someone to bring me parts unless it was a last resort. Harrisville is a one yellow flashing traffic light kind of town so I knew I I was just glad to be safely tied up to a dock and curled up in a warm dry bed for the night with a full belly. I would just have to take it one crisis at a time and bank on the positive bits in between to keep my spirits up. The rain was coming down in a constant downpour and the weather report didn’t call for it to let up for days…. The next chapter will dig up a mix of hot and cold memories while making repairs.
will be finished and up later this week The next leg of the journey will be up this week
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weather report and readied the old boat for another day of battle.
wasn’t my imagination that I was weaving around in a zig zag fashion,
that uses the outboard for steering this was set up for propulsion only and sat down below the deck line.
was rolling in. I eventually arrived to the point that was marked with danger signs on the chart with no sign of the buoys.
had a challenge ahead of me.