Welcome to Lake Erie

Our night at Buffalo Yacht Club was rather noisy and bumpy due to strong westerly winds blowing right on the transom of the boat, causing the water to slap against the hull.  Fortunately it died down some overnight, or so we thought. It was only blowing about 9 knots as we left the dock at 6:00 AM, heading for Erie, PA, about 63 nautical miles.  When we got out on the lake, though, we found the wind blowing about 12-15 knots right from the direction we needed to go.  We put the sails up and started beating upwind.  Our ETA was around 11:00 PM and didn't improve as the day went on.  Our speed increased to over 6 knots when the wind increased to 18-22 knots.  We noticed that the wind direction kept changing so that it was always blowing from whatever course the GPS was calling for.  We started checking out alternative destinations when we realized that we had gone 25 miles in 8 hours and still had another 40 or so to go.  We had heard about Dunkirk, NY but didn't know anything about getting in there. It looked "iffy" on the GPS.  I called Dunkirk Yacht Club and asked for "local" knowledge about getting in there and was told it should be no problem to anchor in the outer basin, so that's where we are now.  It feels good not to be heeled 15 to 20 degrees in four and five foot waves, thinking we would be doing that for another 12 hours or so.  The forecast is for the winds to switch to the north overnight but who knows--the weather people predicted 5 to 15 knots for today so they obviously got it wrong and could well be wrong for tomorrow.

Sue