Sturgeon Bay → Sheboygan
September 16, 2026
Distance: ~67 nautical miles
Waterway / State: Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal → Lake Michigan — Wisconsin
Locks: 0 | 0 total so far
Notable: A much friendlier Lake Michigan day, while also learning how heading and ride comfort mattered when trying to work aboard underway.
The Trip
We were up early in Sturgeon Bay and got Breaking Awave ready to go. Julie pulled us away from the dock and into the canal, and then we started working our way out toward Lake Michigan.
This was also a workday. Julie had already been on our morning stand-up, and Greg joined another call while driving to talk with Alec and Grant about invoicing changes and planning for the next quarter. It was becoming pretty clear that if we were going to keep working while doing the Loop, some days the helm and the office were going to be in the same place.
The waves were generally 1–2 feet out of the northeast. Nothing like the crossing into Sturgeon Bay, but enough that the angle still mattered for comfort.
Julie had another work call at 1:00, so we stayed farther east long enough that we could eventually turn southwest and put the waves in a more comfortable position for her call. A little yawing was much easier to work through than sitting at a computer while the boat was rolling and pitching.
We arrived in Sheboygan around 6:45 that evening after another fairly long day underway.
The Experience
Once we got settled, we walked to Trattoria Stefano for dinner.
This one deserves a little more than just saying we found an Italian restaurant.
It was excellent. There really didn’t seem to be a bad seat in the place, the owner was working as the host, our waiter was great, and we settled in with a bottle of wine and a very good dinner.
After another full day on the water, that was about all we needed.
We headed back to Breaking Awave and went to bed early.
At the Helm
We did have one electronics lesson before we really got going.
At first, the radar wasn’t coming on. We tried shutting down and restarting the multifunction displays, but that didn’t fix it.
Then Julie remembered the radar switch on the upper console, which actually powers the radar unit on the mast. We cycled that switch, the radar reconnected to the network, and everything came back normally.
Another reminder that sometimes the right reset is not the screen displaying the information—it’s the equipment actually creating it.
The other useful lesson from this leg was less about navigation and more about working aboard.
We already knew good internet was going to matter, but this trip reminded us that working underway also meant thinking about the ride itself. If one of us needed to be on a call or working at a computer, a slightly different heading could make the difference between being reasonably comfortable and getting bounced around for an hour.
That was becoming just another factor in how we planned a cruising day.
Today’s Route
[Nebo route visual]
Today in Pictures
[Leaving Sturgeon Bay, underway on Lake Michigan, Sheboygan arrival, marina views and Trattoria Stefano]