The Best Part of Erie (So Far)

We had a short rolling ride from Cleveland to Vermilion - another day of motor sailing with more motor than sail happening. Swells on our beam made us inordinately glad that it was all over when we arrived at noon.

The part of Vermilion where the yacht club resides is a picture perfect community built around a lagoon. On each side of the channel there are white homes of various designs - all quite lovely and all with black roofs and trim - black and white only is the rule if you live in the "Vermilion Lagoons". As a member of the community, you have access to a private beach and also, I suspect, must submit to an unwritten directive to maintain perfectly beautiful and creatively designed gardens complete with expensive and novel lawn accessories - like distinctive post boxes, discreet lawn ornaments and very upscale cars. Which is to say that the community is a pleasure to behold and very pleasing to see as one dinghies around or goes for an evening walk.

We quite enjoyed the small but very comfortable and well kept yacht club and took our turn sitting in the rocking deck chairs assembled on the front porch. A very friendly fellow from a boat near by took Warren and Bob to West Marine in one of the golf carts rented in town for visitors to get around.  Later in the day, we took our dinghies into town to grocery shop and then, in spite of a torrential downpour that held little promise of letting up, we loaded our bags back into our dinghies and sloshed back through the rain.

From Vermilion we sailed (yes sailed) to Sandusky where we anchored for a night in the only anchorage anywhere near the town. It was marked on the chart as a "special anchorage area " and sits next to the parking lots for the huge Sandusky Amusement Park on Cedar Point.  We'd never seen so many varieties of truly scary looking roller coasters and torturous versions thereof. We didn't hear any screams from where we sat, but the sound of the rides traveling over the metal tracks was exactly like wind howling in rigging. Is there any wonder that there were no other boats anchored there? In point of fact, there was a lot of actual wind bouncing us about through the night and testing our mud encased anchors - so much so that we escaped yesterday to the Sandusky Yacht Club where we've been been able to walk through the town, grocery shop and do laundry.  Tomorrow we leave for the Bass Islands for some anchoring or perhaps to sit on a mooring ball in the much talked about Put-In Bay.