Tuesday, August 20, 2013 – St. Ignace, Michigan
After our delightful day trip to Mackinac Island on Sunday, where we took a horse carriage tour and biked around the island’s 8-mile periphery (and ate ice cream and fudge), we were ready to depart the area and start heading down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Not! The wind forecast for the next several days was going to put 15-20 knot wind and 3-4 foot waves in the area we needed to transit from St. Ignace for the next several days. So we’re staying put in St. Ignace until at least Thursday (based on the current weather forecasts and wind/wave prediction models) and we may not get out of here until Friday – but Friday is currently a real likelihood with wind predicted at less than 10 knots and waves less than one foot. That’s more to our liking. It’s not that we can’t manage rougher seas, but we prefer not to as long as there is a reasonable alternative by waiting a few days. Seas of 4 feet become uncomfortable, and anything over four is very uncomfortable for Sanderling’s human passengers!
Thursday, August 22, 2013 – Still in St. Ignace, but not for long!
The crystal clear water of the harbor at St. Ignace, Michigan
Yesterday we debated the pros and cons of heading out this morning and going to Northport or Charlevoix, Michigan. Based on the weather forecasts (waves 2-3 later in the afternoon) we decided to wait. I got up early this morning (0700) and checked the forecast and it was about the same as yesterday’s, so we decided to stick with our earlier plan and wait for another day. Tomorrow and Saturday should be nearly perfect conditions.
We’re now going to head to Traverse City on Grand Traverse Bay by Saturday noon or so, and should be back out to the Northport (near the mouth of the bay) by Saturday evening. The purpose of the trip is to get to a CVS drug store so Judy can get a prescription filled. We originally thought there would be some other options about getting to that CVS via rental car, but the rental car locations seem to be very sparse in this part of the country so the easiest thing to do was to just cruise to Traverse City (the closest CVS). Weather forecast for Sunday is iffy, so we may be stuck in Grand Traverse Bay for a day or so before we can venture out onto Lake Michigan again.
In any event, we’ll get underway around 0600 Friday (tomorrow) morning, cross into Lake Michigan (from Lake Huron) and then head south along the eastern coast of Lake Michigan. It’s about 70 statute miles from here to Northport and about 60 to Charlevoix, so we’ll take either depending on how well we advance over our route. We should be able to make Northport without any difficulty.
We’ve had a nice time here in St. Ignace but we’re ready to leave and get on with our cruise! We don’t like waiting due to weather, but that’s one of those things that we have no control over!
Friday, August 23, 2013 – Northport
Mackinac Bridge in the early morning sunlight
We departed St. Ignace at 0625 this morning (even before sunrise) and about 0700 crossed under the Mackinac Bridge and into Lake Michigan. There was a bit of a current opposing us as we headed west for about 14 miles before turning south through the shipping channel and started our trek down the eastern side of the lake. We’re anchored tonight at a bay just to the east of Northport, Michigan, in about 15 feet of very clear water.
Our cruising plans for the next few days changed about mid afternoon today when we discovered that there was a rental car agency associated with a collision center in Frankfort. Because of the forecast for high winds starting on Sunday and continuing perhaps for several days, we decided to get as far south as possible tomorrow (Frankfort) where Judy will be able to get a rental car on Monday and drive to Traverse City to the CVS where her prescription are waiting for her. We’ll then continue on south when weather permits, perhaps by Tuesday. Grand Haven, where we want to be in a marina by the 29th so Judy can fly out of Grand Rapids on the 30th, is two days away for us from Frankfort; as long as long as we have two days of good weather we’ll make it without difficulty.
We have only about 70 miles to go tomorrow to get to the marina in Frankfort where we now have reservations, so we’ll get an early start again tomorrow morning. We should get there by mid-afternoon at our slow speed of 7.3 MPH!
Day: 78.4SM/68.2NM – 10H55M Trip: 2445.9NM/2810.9SM – 427H10M
Monday, August 26, 2013 – Frankfort, Michigan
We made it to Frankfort from Northport on Saturday, August 24th before the bad weather arrived later that night.
Sunday was blustery with wind from the south at over 15 knots; the nearby beach was filled with sunbathers, kite surfers, paddle boarders, and surfers! It looked like Cocoa Beach on a good day! We spent the day on Sunday checking out the main street of the town (only 1/2 block away), finding ice cream stores and new restaurants.
Judy arranged for a rental car from the local collision center for Monday so we could drive to Traverse City to go to a CVS drug store to pick up her meds.
The top of the dunes north of Frankfurt at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore Park
Almost a 45 degree bank of sand leading right down to the lake’s edge
On the way back we drove through the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Park – a spectacular area of dunes between Frankfort and Crystal Lake on the south and Northport to the north. We’d seen the dunes from the water on Friday and they were spectacular; seeing them from the tops gave us an entirely different perspective. Of course my Golden Age Pass got us into the scenic drive at no charge! Along the course of our drive we stopped to do a little shopping in the local Glenn’s Supermarket – a great store for replenishing.
Weather for the next three days is forecast to be great – waves less than 1 foot and wind around 5 to 10 knots – our kind of weather for cruising on the lake. We’ll depart around 0800 heading about 55 miles to Ludington where we’ll anchor for the night. The next day we hope to get around 40 miles to White Lake and the day thereafter 30 miles to Grand Haven. We’ll make it as long as the weather holds.
More later!
Saturday, August 31, 2013 – Muskegon, Michigan
On Tuesday (August 27th) everything looked good, weather wise, when we got up at 0630 despite overcast skies and light rain. Forecast from Frankfort to Ludington looked good all the way with winds out of the north and waves 1-2. We cast off from the dock at 0800 and were soon southbound along the Michigan coast heading to Ludington. The first part of our route took us on a long stretch and about 5 miles offshore in order to make Little Point Sable. By the time we reached Little Point Sable at 1400 the seas had built to about 3 feet and were getting rough, with wind from the southwest at about 15 knots. After rounding the point the seas increased to 3-4 and for the next hour and a half we were tossed about quite a bit heading to Ludington which was the closest harbor. We actually had to go past the harbor entrance by about half a mile in order to work our way back into the harbor without having a beam sea which would have rolled us even more than taking the waves at at 45 degrees angle. We were both seated and hanging onto the seat backs and we both wondered how sore we’d be in the morning from bracing ourselves. As soon as we entered the breakwater everything calmed down and it was like we had suddenly been transported to a different place! We looked at several anchorages which were identified on a web site, but decided we didn’t like either of them due to depth and what appeared to be “clutter” on the bottom (it shows up on our depth/fish finder), so we moved to a 12 foot area at the southeast corner of the harbor and spent a very restful night despite the cement plant 1/4 mile to the north!
Day: 55.0SM/47.9NM – 8H15M Trip: 2553.7NM/2934.4SM – 444H45M
The forecast for Wednesday (August 28) was again good and when we awoke at 0630 everything seemed OK again! So again, we decided to go out and if it was good we’d continue as far as we could until the afternoon winds came up, perhaps we could get as far as White Lake, about 50 miles. We departed the anchorage at 0715 and threaded our way through numerous small boats trolling for salmon (they’re congregating getting ready to spawn and enter the river there) – all the fishing people seemed to be enjoying themselves, but with all their lines trailing behind their boats they do not like to alter course, so we picked our way around them. Upon exiting the breakwater the lake was quite calm and we again headed south. We added some rpms to cruise at about 8 MPH in order to arrive at our destination a little earlier than we would at 7.3 MPH. As it turned out the weather cooperated fully and at White Lake we decided to keep going all the way to Muskegon (about 12 miles further down the lake) to take advantage of the good weather and ensure that we’d get there in plenty of time to get Judy to the airport on Friday morning. We entered the breakwater at Muskegon at 1445 and had the anchor down in about 10 feet of water in Snug Harbor (northwest corner of the harbor) by 1510. We happened to anchor on a direct path between a public boat launching ramp in a state park and the harbor channel, so every small fishing boat in the area passed by us on the way to or returning from fishing late into the evening and the next morning at first light. There were so many small boats passing into the evening that we turned on all three deck/spreader lights to better illuminate Sanderling rather than relying only on the anchor light and left them on late into the night even after we went to bed. The boats were fishing for salmon as well as bass.
Day: 58.4SM/ 50.8NM – 7H55M Trip: 2604.6NM/2992.8SM – 452H40M
On Thursday (August 29) we only had to cross Muskegan Harbor to get to our marina – Great Lakes Marina – where we would spend the next seven day while Judy flies to Kansas for her brother and sister-in-law’s 50th wedding celebration and her mother’s 92nd birthday. We got a rental car from Enterprise (where we have a corporate account) on Friday morning and I drove Judy to the airport in Grand Rapids for her 1215 flight. I’m keeping the rental car for the week she is gone so I can see some of the sights in the area, get to restaurants and do some boat shopping, if necessary.
Day: 30.0SM/2.6NM – 0H45M Trip: 2607.2NM/2995.8SM – 453H25M