42°59′43″ N 82°25′6″ W

Sept 18 – Overnight at Bridgeview Marina, Sarnia

I left the marina in Port Lambton at 7:00am Monday morning. It was a completely different day on the river – compared to Sunday.

The sky was overcast, more like what we expect to experience at this time of year. Sunrises are also getting a bit later each morning. Today the sunrise was on my starboard side whereas every day before it was on my stern.

There was no pleasure craft  traffic at all on the river. Refreshing compared to the chaos the day before!

The current in the river was pretty strong & I spent most of the day poking along at 4.5 knots “climbing the hill”. I encountered several freighters going each way. It’s surprising how quickly they catch up to me as the current doesn’t slow them down too much.

This part of the river to Sarnia is heavily developed on the US & the Canadian sides. Lots of big houses & very modest cottages too. This big place in the photo below is in Port Huron, MI. It has a crane on the dock to lift the “toys” out of the water & a waterslide off the balcony!

There were also several higher density developments on the US side of the river that appeared to be much more affordable.

I finally got to the Bluewater Bridge in Sarnia at noon & began to head into Lake Huron.

The current here is incredibly strong & the boat speed slowed to less than 2 knots at several points. In addition, I had to work hard at keeping the boat on course because the current kept trying to push me to port & starboard.

I finally got out of the current & into the lake but the wind had come up & now I was constantly bashing into one meter high waves coming directly into the bow. Even with the waves I was making good progress but I still had over 50 nautical miles to get to Goderich so I decided to turn around & head back to a marina in Sarnia for the night.

The “trip” back to Sarnia was much quicker. Once I got into the river’s current my speed went up to over 12 knots!

On the way back in I also discovered that the steering on the upper helm was not very responsive so I went to the lower station to steer into the marina. Once I was tied up on the dock I took a closer look at the upper helm steering & found it to be barely working at all. Fortunately the marina had a mechanic on duty & he came over right away to check things out for me. He quickly discovered that my hydraulic steering system was low on oil & it also needed to be re-pressurized – with a bicycle pump, of all things. In less than an hour the steering system was all tuned up & it now works better than it did when I first left Jacksonville. So, having to abandon my goal of getting to Goderich that night worked out OK.

The weather forecast for Lake Huron on Tuesday is much better so hopefully I will make it there by dinner time.

Cheers!