Lyn's Log, 25th August 2007
Lake Erie & Detroit

Next`day, 9th August, we were off down Lake Erie, for a pretty much through passage. The first night we anchored off Long Point and then sailed through the second night arriving in Leamington Marina during the morning. We had the best reception here for a long time where both the telephone call and VHF were answered immediately with helpful staff. There were flower baskets and gardens all around making it very beautiful. Here we met an English couple from Plymouth who had left there yacht on the hard at Kingston, Lake Ontario, for the winter. They were spending the summer months in England and the winters sailing in the sunshine. They were headed for the Caribbean.

Early in the morning we sailed to the end of Lake Erie and part way up the Detroit River to Windsor so that we could visit the Ford museum in Detroit over the river. Arriving in the evening we found a good anchorage just opposite the marina where we also found a good Internet connection. In the morning we went to the marina’s fuel dock and filled up and booked in for a night, but we could only tie up to the inside of the outer wall where we needed the ladder placed outside of our fenders to keep us off the pilings. It was a long walk to get anywhere, there was no internet connection and it was the most expensive marina we had encountered for a long while. I walked around and made some enquiries and found that although the small marina next door did not have enough water for us, the manager thought the Windsor Yacht Club did and gave me the telephone number and name of their dock master. Before long I had a refund from the marina and we were nicely tied up at the guest dock in the yacht club. We stayed for two nights at half price and ate in the large restaurant in the clubhouse. The club had requested a Royal Charter and was certainly looking the part.

We rented a car for a day and drove over the bridge into the US. Everyone was stopped at the Customs post to show their ID. We produced our passports and were pulled over to wait in a queue to be seen by the Customs/Immigration. Eventually we realised that if we had produced the white ‘I94’ cards that we had been given when we entered the USA at Key West, we would have been able to continue unhindered. These cards entitled us to be in the States for six months from the date of issue, 8th of March, so we could come and go any time (though confusingly it says on them they must be surrendered on leaving the US).

We arrived at the Ford Museum at ten and by five, when they closed, managed to get round most of the museum and the Greenfield Village. The museum houses an enormous collection of trains, horse drawn vehicles, bicycles, motor vehicles, aeroplanes, and included the first steam train in the US complete with carriages looking like they had just been removed from the horses and had the wheels changed. There was the first US built train, the DeWitt Clinton (pic above), and the largest steam locomotive ever built, the Allegheny #1601. There was a replica of the Wright brothers’ first aeroplane with some surviving parts of the original, the "Spirit of St Louis", the car in which Kennedy was shot, fantasy cars, rock star cars, a ten-seater bicycle, and much more. Apart from the transport there were other sections of collections such as furniture, dolls houses, clocks, etc.

One that caught our eyes was a futuristic house from the 1920's dreamed up by Buckminster Fuller. The round house was hung from a central core, was portable like a tent, was self-cleaning and was energy efficient. Although a family lived in one for forty years, the idea obviously did not catch on as the example in the museum was built from the only two that had been produced. In an area showing the use of different types of power, was the world's oldest surviving engine,'Fairbottom Bobs', built by Newcomen in 1760, which had been brought from England and reconstructed with its stone walls.

Greenfield Village was built to reflect an era around 1880. Ford had collected buildings from the region and reconstructed them in the village. They include the homes of many eminent people, including the Wright brothers and Thomas Edison. There are early school houses, log cabins, quaint shops, churches, slave quarters, taverns, all brought alive by people in period costume. There was a barber-shop quartette on a street corner, someone riding a penny farthing, old Model-T Ford cars driving around the roads, a steam engine taking people for a ride, smoking and blowing its horn as it circled the village. How I love that smell and sound – I wonder why? We could have spent a whole day just in the village spending more time poking around the houses and listening to what the people had to say in each house.

On our return to Windsor we made good use of the car getting our propane bottle refilled as it had become empty that morning, getting in a few more groceries, cans of beer and cider, and refuelling the car ready for its return. It was a very good day.

After returning the rented car we set out across Lake St Clair under sail and then entered the St Clair River. The entrance has the curious feature that the USA is on the north shore of the river and Canada on the south - the only place where that happens. The border is along the length of thye river. As we progressed up the current grew stronger until we had to motor as we began to go backwards under sail alone. Keeping to the Canadian side, we spent the night in a marina in Sarnia. It was the most expensive marina we had encountered for months and didn't even have a free wifi connection, but the people around us were extremely friendly which made up for it. One guy gave us a lift to the supermarket and back, and another, who was preparing for his extended retirement cruise, gave us his charts of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay with some excellent pointers for our route. He said he was heading for the sun and would not be back that way.

At this point we realised that our I94 cards would run out about the time we expected to cross the border from Canada to the US and enter Lake Michigan. As far as we could tell, there were no Customs posts in that area that could issue a new card. lthough there may be telephones linked to Customs, there was nowhere in the area where we could get new cards. When we called US Customs about this, they suggested we cross the river from Sarnia to Port Huron where there was a customs post.

The Port Huron Yacht Club, just off the St Clair River, had an easy guest mooring on the edge of the river that ran through the town. It was a Saturday, a big race was on and the club was deserted. The Customs post in Port Huron apparently closed at weekends leaving an answer machine. It looked like we were going to be illegal immigrants until Monday, when a local guy asked if he could help. He managed to somehow contact Customs who suggested that he take us an international bridge that spans the St Clair River to the north of Port Huron. This he did and before too long we had our new I94 and a taxi back to town. Why is it so much harder to try to obey the law than ignore it? There were huge queues of people on the bridge waiting to get through the Customs post, all no doubt perfectly innocent, as if you were not innocent, you only had to hop across the river on a private boat.

Port Huron seemed to have closed down for the weekend, but at least we had a good wifi connection. The following morning was very wet so we stayed on. We met and talked to several of the yacht club members, and to Chuck and Bonni, the other visitors, in their yacht Star Gazer. They had recently started their retirement cruising, aiming for Oriental, North Carolina, having just married in June. We had a couple of very pleasant evenings with them before we eventually left on the morning of 21st August to cross Lake Huron.