TRIP 2 SUMMARY
Cleveland, OH to Chicago, IL Area
August 2-12, 1997

     The crew of ILLUSIONS, David and Angela Magill, unaccompanied by offspring or other crew, moved the new ILLUSIONS, a 1995 Carver 440 FBMY, from Cleveland, OH beginning really on August 3.  Angela and I flew to Cleveland on the second, but the travel and provisioning the boat took most of the day.  This included locking the keys inside the borrowed GMC Jimmy while it was running, which kept the groceries cool, but required a policeman with a "jimmy" to unlock the "Jimmy", if you get my drift.  Also, we had another great meal down on The Flats on the Cuyahoga River with friends who live there; and we got to experience Cleveland on a Saturday night.  It is true--Cleveland rocks!  There was a lot going on the river-a concert, a live tv show, lots of boats and restaurants, several cruise ships, etc.

     We stopped Sunday night at Put-In-Bay, OH, a cute little town on South Bass Island in the western end of Lake Erie.  The chart shows a "ship" on the island, on the western side, and we saw it and wondered how it got there.  Later I read about it in the September, 1997 issue of BOATING magazine.  It used to be part of a 620-ft freighter.  It was soon to be a "boat and breakfast", according to the article on page 36.

     The Detroit River led us out of Lake Erie and up to the City, which looked nice from the water.  North of Detroit, at Harrison TWP, we spent two nights at the local Carver dealer's marina, getting some repairs made, changing the engine oil, etc, then on to Lake Huron and Canada.


     We went up the St Clair River, and the water kept getting greener and greener.  After we got into Lake Huron a ways, the water got deep and dark, but right at the head of the river it was beautiful.  We stayed the night at the little Canadian town of Kincardine, which has a great lighthouse just inside the breakwater.  At 8:30 pm a bagpipe was played from the top of the lighthouse, with a great sunset in the background.

     We went into Georgian Bay and up to Killarney, which appears to me to be the point at which you have Georgian Bay on your east and the North Channel on your west.  It's a small fishing village with a couple of hotels, stores, and streets-maybe 250 residents-but an important stop for provisioning.  We met cruisers there who said they were spending 4 weeks in the North Channel and 5 weeks in Georgian Bay.  We went through here in less than 3 days.  But, I saw enough to know that I'd like to return.  You could spend the summer here and anchor at a different spot every night.

     There are mountains there with a white appearance caused by the quartzite rocks in the makeup
of the mountain.  Other rocks are limestone, granite, pink granite, etc.  Some islands are all rocks; others have varying numbers of trees on them.  It is desolate--a real wilderness where solitude can be found. Some of the channels are narrow and twisting, but I found I liked these after I went through a few of them.  We had borrowed some charts from a fellow cruiser who had visited the area, and we bought others, including some I had borrowed but wanted to have in the future.  This area is really special.  Weather was generally cool--60s to 70s in the day, 50s to 60s at night.  We did sunbathe and got wet one day while at anchor, but it would be exaggerating to say we went swimming.

     We returned to the USA at De Tour, MI, on the St Marys River, which connects Lake Superior (we didn't go there) to Lake Huron.  Another night at anchor was spent in the Les Cheneaux Islands in MI.  Then we cruised into Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Island harbor for a look at the world's largest summer-only hotel.  We could not tie up, even for lunch.  Ferries bring people out to the island, which is a popular tourist spot.  No cars are allowed on the island.  They have horses and wagons, or you can walk.

     We went under the 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge and started down the west side of Michigan, but then we were in Lake Michigan.  We spent a night at Frankfort, MI and a night at Grand Haven, MI, home of the world's largest musical fountain, which we saw.  In fact, because we found another Carver dealer there, we left the boat in Grand Haven rather than going down to Chicago on this trip.  This allowed us to get some repairs done and see more of the North Channel because we were not rushing quite as much to get to our flight on the 12th.  The only bad thing about Grand Haven is we couldn't get a rent car there; we had to go to Grand Rapids where there is an airport with a substantial rental car fleet.

     There are daily logs of the trip and video tapes if you are interested in more details.

Statistics for Trip 2:

842 miles
54.1 running hours in 9 days
1269.5 gallons of diesel
average speed-15.5 mph
average fuel-1.5 gal per mile

Statistics for Trips 1 & 2 combined:

1655 miles
128.8 running hours
2316 gallons of diesel
average gals per mile--1.4
average speed--12.8 mph

David Magill