Sail Far Live Free

There are several Great Lakes cruising destinations that are truly world class. Lake Huron's North Channel, Lake Superior's Apostle Islands, and Lake Michigan's Door County Peninsula are three of the most well known, both in the region and in the larger cruising community as a whole. This summer my family and I had the good fortune of taking an 11 day cruise to Door County from our home port in Muskegon, Michigan. While the weather didn't allow us to circumnavigate the entire peninsula during our short cruise window, we did enjoy a couple of excellent Lake Michigan crossings and a bit of time exploring a few Door County ports. If you plan to take a similar cruise, you'll have to make a few logisitcal decisions. First, you'll need to decide which port to depart from in Michigan and where to arrive in Wisconsin when you cross Lake Michigan. You'll also need to decide which ports to visit in Door County. What follows is a summary of our experience and a few

...the object of cruising is to make a complete change of surroundings, a change for  the eyes, ears, and nose...a cabin should be very different from a city apartment... you should not lug along what you are trying to leave behind... -L. Francis Herreshoff (boat designer, naval architect, and author) Our big cruise for this summer is nearly upon us. My anticipation is building like the waves of a storm as they roll over a shallow sandbar. We plan to head north out of Muskegon with a very loose goal of eventually crossing Lake Michigan and exploring Wisconsin's Door County Peninsula. But as any experienced cruising sailor knows, the winds dictate the destination and we only control the journey. Even if we don't end up in Door County we'll bare in mind Herreshoff's quote and remember that we're doing this for "a complete change of surroundings, a change for the eyes, ears and nose."  I've crossed Lake Michigan under sail twice, both during the 2008 Qu