Lake Michigan: ferocious, limpid and undulant

 Some days we sail for seven hours on this magnificent body of water.  The water and sky are spectacular. Changes are often sudden.  Sunday we could not have managed to get Speakeasy into the big lake without great danger to her and to us.  Six foot waves, crashing white caps: ferocious. 

Today as we left the Pentwater channel, the lake was destitute of wind or wave: limpid.  Had we not motored to Manistee, we would have been "as idle as a painted boat on a painted ocean. As it was, our reliable diesel engine propelled us northward although we traveled in a haze and could hardly see the shoreline.  We even missed seeing Big Point Sable.

We changed from shorts and T-shirts to long trousers and long sleeved shirts to ward off the hundreds, maybe thousands of little gnats that covered the cockpit floor and seats.  Mark's Buzz Off hat - impregnated with bug repellent - didn't bother them at all.

Sitting on the little elevated "perch," on the starboard stern, I marveled at what I saw.  360 degrees of water. The silvery, slowly rhymic waves emblazoned with crisscross patterns: undulant.