Day 2-282 Surprise! We crossed Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, WI

Well, as I said yesterday, we planned to cross Lake Michigan at some point, and today turned out to be the day. The National Weather Service had essentially the same forecast at 5:30 am as it did last night. Light northwest winds changing to light southerly winds in the afternoon. In crossing the lake we went through four of their forecast zones, and all predicted waves of 1 to 2 feet or less. The light fog last night was much thicker this morning, but fortunately the SS Badger arrived on time at 6:00 am. Once she was safely past our marina, we departed at 6:10 am for a trip of 96.1 miles to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We knew that it would be about a 12 hour trip, but we had forgotten that we would cross into Central Daylight Savings Time at the state line in about the middle of the lake. So, we gained an hour if you can actually call it a gain...
     As we cleared the harbor we could see a dozen or more fishing boats within about 3 miles of the harbor mouth. Thus, we went a little slower than normal until we were past (most of) them. We only actually saw one boat, but the radar seemed to be working very well. Visibility was about 0.3 miles so we had plenty of time to avoid anyone who happen to pop up in front of us. About one hour after sunrise, the fog rapidly burned off. There was some haze, but we did see tow lake freighter 5 and 10 miles way so the haze was minimal. The first 6 + hours were spent in essentially no wind but residual waves (or a dead sea) with waves of 1-2 feet out of the south. About 1:00 pm CDT the wind shifted to be out of the south at about 5 mph. Over the next 2.5 hours the wind increased to about 15 mph and the ripples grew into 1.5 foot waves. This is a lot of detail about the weather, but it is difficult to take a picture of fog or of a lake freighter 5 miles away...
     We both managed naps, but after the early start and 12 hours on the water, we are both very tired tonight. Plus, with the time change it is only7:50 pm right now and way too early to go to bed.

     We approached the shoreline at Milwaukee at about a 45 degree angle, and we could see the first skyscrapers about 20+ miles out. The picture at the right is the skyline from about 8 miles out from the port.

     The next picture (at left) is about the same view from much closer to port. Our destination was the marina at Lakeshore State Park. The waterfront in the downtown area seems to be mainly parks with museums, etc. That is the good news, but the bad news seems to be that this area is separated from downtown by super highways with limited opportunities to cross them. Thus, we ate on board tonight.





     The state marina has no facilities (bathrooms, gas dock, etc.) so we stopped at another marina for a pump out on the way into our marina. They charged $13.00 for a pump out, but it was free if you filled up. Having just filled our tanks at Ludington when we had arrived there, we only need 43.5 gallons of diesel fuel, but that counted as a fill up so we saved the cost of a very expensive pump out. This also gave us a good check on our fuel mileage, which remained at 2.2 mpg. Remember that Lucky Us is 43 feet long and weighs over 20 tons so it is very good fuel mileage for that big a boat.

     Across from our dock is the Discovery World Science and Technology Center. The picture at the right shows part of the center and a three masted schooner that was just leaving the dock as we arrived. A very pretty sight to end a long but very good trip today.