July 17, 2026
The smoke rolled in to Northport on Tuesday morning. At that time, we thought it would be short lived, but now realize that it’s going to hang around and continues to worsen. Now storms are moving in making our anchorage in Northport very lumpy. So, we surrendered and moved this morning to a slip at the Marina where we’ll hunker down (enjoying the Leelanau Township Library) and run the AC at night to keep some of the smoke out of the cabin. We booked 6 nights as the situation is not improving anytime soon according to reports.
This is the first time we are not sure about making it to the North Channel. We certainly do not want to be there with this thick smoke and with so many fires burning across Canada and Minnesota. It’s not hard to imagine the smoke being with us for a while. It is disappointing. It is also, very eerie. Kind of like a total solar eclipse, but without the eclipse. The light feels off. The honey bees are landing on our boat- groggy and confused. The waterfowl are hunkered down. No birds are singing. Most vacationers are staying away and off the beach, so no sounds of kids playing in the water. The bay is grey and still. We like being outside, but not in this stuff. We can see ashes floating on the surface of the water/
We are sailors, and we will adjust our sails, reminding ourselves that our over arching goal is to enjoy our trip not try to stick to a schedule or plan too far ahead of time. I’m really glad that we crossed from Washington Island when we did because it is engulfed in the smoke even worse that we are in Northport. I’m glad that we are able to minimize our exposure to the smoke and take care of our airways because we are in a slip. Time to break out a new book.
Being anchored out limits how and where we can seek refuge. Neither one of us likes to leave Reflection anchored for longer than a few hours in higher winds. We are probably over cautious because our new anchor “BIG MAMA” is totally awesome and has proved reliable even in 30-35 mph blows. Now that we are in the marina, we are good leaving Reflection.
On the up side, we had a nice visit from Tim. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to ride his bike. We did visit Northport Pub and Grill to watch the England/Argentina game. He is looking good and says he is enjoying gardening and taking care of the house, watching soccer and Le Tour De France. It hard to believe that next Tuesday he’ll be celebrating his 36th birthday.
In other news, we seemed to have timed everything just right to hit all of midge swarms of the Great Lakes Area. It started in Frankfort at a midge scale of 50 continued in Wisconsin with a midge scale of 800 and now as of last night I think we are over midge scale 2000. Everything outside – boom, mast, canvas, deck, lines, dinghy is covered with little dead midges. Their only redeeming feature is that they do not bite or swarm around our heads. Just a nuisance. Harold used our bucket to swoosh down the deck this morning and had to keep going to the bow to get fresh water because all of the midges were floating everywhere in the water.
It’s always something…..
Marcia