Wolverine Park Marina - Erie, PA

Monday, Sept 6
Traveled 41nm
7:00pm

We were woken this morning at 730am by someone knocking on the boat and telling us that there isn't any overnight docking where we were.  We pumped the head, I made sandwiches for lunch, and we left Ashtabula this morning at 9am.  The wind was from the South 10-15 knots with gusts up to 16knots.  I had the first watch.  Phil relieved me early at 11am as I was tired and I went below and slept.  The winds built during the day to where I saw a wind speed of 28 knots and the winds in the upper teens to low 20's and the wind clocked to 140degree instead of the 120 degrees that Phil had.  Phil came up and we rolled in the jib - too overpowered.  We made it into Erie about 4pm on Phil's watch.  I called Wolverine Marina on the radio and neglected to let them know that we were a sailing vessel that drew 6 feet.  It was important information as we hit bottom on the way to the dock they allocated for us, but not as bad a last night.  I hope this isn't a trend for this trip!

We also met a nice couple Dave and Cindy and they were the first to sign one of my quilt blocks.  They are planning on going to Port Dover.  We had the rest of the stew for supper tonight along with some of the butter biscuits I made.  Was really good.  We had showers, and did it feel good to be clean!  I looked in the mirror and saw that I got some sunburn on my face even though I did put the 50 sunscreen on my face - that was the only skin that was exposed during sailing today.

I'm glad to say that I haven't gotten seasick at all!  So it looks like my plan of not drinking and taking the seasickness medicine has helped.  Yeah!

Wolverine Marine is nice - it's right downtown at the base of Hamot Medical Center.  They have many helicopters flying in and out - and it's noisy from all the cars, but not many boats docked here, so the marina itself is quiet.   We are planning on leaving early tomorrow morning to go all the way to Buffalo.  It's about 67nm - so will be a long day, but the weather is predicting 8ft waves on Wednesday and we don't want to lose another day or two.    Wednesday will be spent taking down the mast so hopefully we can start down the Erie canal on Thursday.