August 2, 2021, Monday, Milliken State Park Marina in Detroit

It was really breezy all night. It seemed like I woke up every hour on the hour to check the wind. It wasn't until 3:00 that I noticed it was finally diminishing which was a big relief. I got up about 6:45. Peter and Marianna planned to leave at 7:00. We planned to leave an hour later so we would arrive about the same time at Milliken State Park.

We started to pull the anchor at 7:30. It took us 15 minutes to get it up and all of the seaweed and mud cleaned off of it. I even got my machete out to cut the weeds off the anchor and chain. I had not used it since the Thousand Islands in Lake Ontario. We had a lot of weeds today. If you look closely you can see my machete at the bottom of the picture when I am leaning over to wack the weeds. When we were done we treated ourselves to the last maple donut Gary had given us Saturday. - we had frozen it.

The trip to Milliken was 54.8 miles. We arrived at 3:30 so it took us about 8 hours at an average speed of 7.1 knots. It is slow going up the river against the current. At one time we were only making 4.7 knots. We arrived at the mouth of the Detroit River at exactly the same time as Peter and Mariana which was kind of fun. Peter has to motor rather slowly to prevent his motor from overheating. At one time he was going upriver at 2.9 knots which was frustratingly slow for him. We always take the back channel up the river and always see and photograph swans.

It was a really bouncy ride at first. We were going directly into 2' waves. I sped Annie up from 8 to 9 knots to get a little better ride. We were bouncing up and down but not rolling from side to side like we did going to Cedar Point, which was better. Still, remembering that I almost got flung out the side door on the last trip, I got out a lee board and blocked off the door so I could not fall through. In the end, it calmed down enough that Kerry could get up and organize her cabinets on the way. The second half of the trip was very pleasant. Jimbo followed our voyage from Texas using AIS.

There is a new international bridge being constructed over the Detroit River. It will be in addition to the Ambassador Bridge. It is going to have colorful graphics.

We were tied up quickly once we arrived at Milliken. Kerry wiped down the boat while I hooked up the power. Since the bag of emergency frozen margaritas in the freezer appeared to be leaking it seemed obvious that we should drink them up - which we did! Brillig arrived about 4:45. We helped them dock and then I walked over with Peter to sign in. 

Cocktails and dinner were on Brillig. Marianna had a nice homemade quiche and fresh cabbage salad. Homemade cookies made a tasty desert. To end the evening perfectly, Marianna broke out the Amaretto liquor and Peter got out his cigar box and we enjoyed our first smoke of the voyage. It was fun to be cruising with the Orros again. This should be a great trip.

Not sure what we will do tomorrow. Because we are in downtown Detroit we did decide we won't be riding our bikes around outside the marina and will use Uber of cabs for transportation..