Leo's not a sailor...

I've been having fun on the boat with my humans. I love to snuggle, which seems to make them happy, too. And they have lots of toys on board for me to play with. Carol is going to put lots of photos of me at the top of this entry so you can see how much fun we’re having.

Today was filled with all kinds of new experiences for me! First, my humans let me watch while this machine made something they like to drink. It was very interesting, but kind of scary. Then, just before noon Roger made that loud noise with the engine again, and our house started moving again. That was okay, because I remembered it from before so I wasn’t scared. It was even nicer when Roger & Carol turned the engine off and started sailing. They even let me go up into the cockpit to walk around and explore. That was fun until my tummy started feeling funny. I came downstairs and went to my litterbox. I almost made it when something really strange happened. Carol says I puked because I was seasick. It’s the first time in my whole short life anything like that happened to me, so I was kind of surprised. I felt a little better afterwords, so I tried to sleep. But the house kept tipping, first one way, then the other. I don’t really understand it all, so maybe Carol should explain.

After leaving harbor just before noon, we put up sail early on, even though there wasn’t much wind. We ghosted along, our speed dropping as low as 2 knots sometimes. Just when we thought about starting the engine, around 12:45, the wind came up. It was more westerly than we would have liked, so we had to tack back up the length of Lake Charlevoix, but it turned out to be a wonderful afternoon’s sail. Eventually the wind piped up and we breezed along at top speed, heeling almost 20 degrees. That was fine, except we had to tack a few times, meaning we alternated between heeling first one way, then the other. This did not make Leo very happy.  But WE thoroughly enjoyed it! If we had stayed out any longer we probably would have taken in a reef. It was a warm afternoon with a WSW breeze -- a perfect late summer day to be out on the water.
As we were approaching the harbor we saw another Nonsuch, “Serenity”, putting up sail to blow downwind back to Boyne City. Her captain, Bill Vesey, sails alone frequently and has even taken second in his class in the solo Chicago to Mac race! We may be partial, but we think she’s a lovely boat, especially sailing off the wind.

Leo was much happier when we got into harbor shortly after 3:00 p.m. He came out and explored the cockpit and I got several good photos of him. It’s been nice having a ship’s cat this summer, but we think in future we’ll leave Merlin and Leo at home to play together while we sail.