It’s Time!

It’s time to get ready to resume the Loop on Selkie. It seems like yesterday, but it will be 10 months since we last saw Selkie in September 2022. God willing, we will be sailing Selkie 4000 miles or so for the next 10 months to where we “cross our wake” in Solomons, Maryland in May 2024.

We last saw Selkie getting tucked in for the winter in Cheboygan, Michigan. Walstrom, the boatyard that took care of her this past winter fixed some things on Selkie and our dinghy that needed attention. 

Selkie will be in better shape when we see her than when we left her… and we can’t wait.

Selkie at her haul out last Fall

Selkie getting put to bed at Walstrom Marina in Cheboygan

Speaking of winter, Libbie and I have been through a lot these past 10 months since we last saw Selkie.

We had a barnburner of a winter here in the Lake Tahoe area.  As has been widely reported, we had almost 20 atmospheric rivers blasting from the Pacific Ocean dumping more than 700” of snow in the Lake Tahoe Basin.  This was the second biggest snowfall since they started measuring snowfall in the Sierras almost a century ago. 

Suffice to say it was a legendary ski season. 

Our house on February 28, 2023

To top that off, it was Libbie’s 50^th year as a certified Ski Instructor.  It was her 53rd year if you count the years she taught before she became a certified instructor.

She had her best winter yet with ski lessons, training other instructors and giving on snow examinations.  She was recognized by PSIA-AASI, the snowsports instructor’s association with a 50-year pin, and a special award for her support of the organization.  It was nice to see her recognized for all the support and volunteer work she’s given to PSIA-AASI.

But now it’s time to get back on the Loop.

We fly to Selkie later in July.  We will check her out and make sure all is shipshape, and the repairs completed satisfactorily. 

We then provision her, and head back out onto the Loop!  

Overview of our trip from now until the end of 2023

We’ve a lot of miles to cover before the end of the year.

We will explore the Northern Great Lakes, specifically Huron and Michigan and then head down the River System in early October.  From Chicago, we plan to wind up on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico sometime close to the end of year. 

We have about 2,000 miles to go between now and the end of December. 

Our trip for the rest of this year is in red.

As it turns out, we have some time to explore, whether we want to or not.

The Illinois River, the first part of the River System we will go on is closed until September 30, so we can’t leave the Great Lakes until then.   

The reason for the delay until September 30 is that the Army Corps of Engineers is retrofitting / replacing three locks on the Illinois River this summer. These locks have been in service for almost a century and need some serious upgrading. The timing for the closures is so the locks can be opened in time for this fall to haul the biggest cargo on this waterway, the grain from all the harvests in the fall.

Our Exploration Plans for the Great Lakes of Huron and Michigan

Huron and Michigan are the 4^th and 5^th largest lakes in the world.  We plan to spend some time checking them out from August until mid-September. 

Our plan is to backtrack from Mackinaw into Canada to Lake Huron’s North Channel and Georgian Bay at the north end of Lake Huron.

We want to explore the numerous anchorages and harbors we missed as we blazed through the area last summer. We were on a mission to get to Mackinaw before the end of July back then.

This year, we want to take a few weeks and explore the area.   We will seek out some new places and revisit some old places we loved before we head down Lake Michigan to Chicago, where we start the River System portion of the Loop. 

One of the more interesting areas we will explore includes the Croker Island Complex, which includes the Benjamins Islands, a circle of islands formed by a pluton, a magma chamber of an ancient volcano.

This volcano was active when the Precambrian Shield was formed 4.5 billion years ago. Erosion from numerous ice ages has scraped it flat to the point that it’s not very tall anymore.

This complex of islands contains Magnetite, a magnetic iron ore, that significantly disturbs the navigation compass readings in the area. We will sail with caution as there are no soft places in this area.

The Croker Island Complex in Lake Huron’s North Channel

We will also spend some time on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay, where there are probably 20-30,000 distinct bays and channels to navigate through. All of this is formed from the pink granite rocks of the Precambrian Shield.

We will then head back into Lake Michigan the first part of September, making our way down to the Chicago area, weather permitting by the middle of the month.

We may come back through on the Michigan side, or go to the Wisconsin side and come down that way.

Our target will be Waukegan, Illinois to put Selkie at a dock for a couple of weeks, while we fly back to Tahoe.

We plan to get off Selkie about once a quarter to travel back to Tahoe, and / or Austin where our children’s families are.

Wrapping Up

There’s a lot of preparation we have to do before we leave. 

There are some replacement parts, tools and things we’ve acquired for Selkie that we need to transport when we travel back there. 

We have to get our house buttoned up for a couple of months. 

We have to remember what clothes we left on Selkie so we don’t take too much back.

Finally we need to take time to say goodbye to good friends who live here in Lake Tahoe before we go! 

It seems strange now, but we are heading out in two and a half weeks.

It’s time!