Day 151- 51 miles and a pool!

Tuesday August 17, 2021.
Temp: 75/55. Humidity: 56/89 %, Top Wind: SW8 mph, Precip: none! SUNNY ALL DAY!, Miles Traveled: 51

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We had a really peaceful night at anchor. Captain never sleeps good when we’re on the hook, but it was as calm as could be. Very rarely did we even hear water slapping on the hull…. except for when the fishermen were still coming in at nearly midnight! There was a boat launch to the east of us (right about where the sun is coming up) that all the fishing boats went to. But they came in at no-wake, so it was fine. Another beautiful sunrise for another beautiful day on Lake Michigan. I’m sure that these kinds of days are why people live here.

The picture above was at 7:00. We were up and ready pretty quickly, since I didn’t want to make coffee on the batteries – that duty would wait until we were under way. No unplugging or untieing today…. just weigh the anchor – like ‘anchors aweigh‘. We were kind of hoping that the anchor was in sand since we’re in the sand capital of Michigan and it grabbed really good yesterday. I started pulling in the chain, and took the bridle off. Once the chain that had been on the ground came up, it was really muddy. Oh geeze. Time out. Gotta get out the weiner dog hose. (You know- the kind that expands when it gets full of water?). We got it hooked up to the raw water spigot in the stern and I took it up to the bow with me. The chain was packed with mud, so I had to constantly spray it with water as it came up. This took awhile, but we finally got to where the chain was tight and we were pulling on the anchor. I stopped hauling in chain, Captain nudged us forward, and I let us sit for a minute while I kept rinsing. Next try on the windlass power pedal, the anchor was loose and I brought it and 40 pounds of mud to the surface. I tried spraying it, and that wasn’t working very well. Time out. Get the boat hook and try scraping it off. Plop, plop went some globs of mud. I got most of it off, and then spraying got the rest of the sticky mud off. Captain idled us along to get us away from other boats while I washed the anchor. By 7:30 we were all cleaned up and put away, and on our way out the jetty.

Looking out on the horizon were all kinds of bright white spots. Lots of fishing boats. With the sun shining laterally across the horizon, they were all so bright!

We passed this one and I wondered if he had enough fishing rods. 🤷‍♀️

The water was just a magnificent color of blue.

And we had blue sparkles!! YAY! It was a beautiful day on the water!

This is the Big Sable Lighthouse, with lots of sand dunes around.

Yep – it was noon already, and we were getting closer to our destination, just around the point.

The State Park had all kinds of people out playing on the beach. Later on in the day, we were talking to some locals. They said that there are three ‘sandbars’ that parallel the shoreline at graduating depths. They said that they like to go to the second bar and drop the anchor, then take the dinghy to shore for a fun and generally isolated play at the beach adventure.

Here is our welcoming lighthouse entrance into Ludington harbor.

This was an interesting lighthouse. Notice the snow shovel looking scoop on the north side? And the house looks like it leans a bit to the north. That is where the worst weather comes from, so I guess it is braced to face it! It has been here since 1924, so I guess it works.

Into Ludington we went.

This is looking east going into the harbor. There is a Coast Guard station on the left, and our marina is straight ahead. We pulled into the fuel dock and took on 155 gallons of diesel at $3.29/gal. One of the best prices we’ve seen lately, for Valvtech. They told us where our slip was and we tootled around to it and backed in.

I went for a quick walk to check out the marina. Oh my goodness! It’s Sorry Kids reincarnated as a fishing boat! Our boat’s name was Sorry Kids when we bought her, and we renamed her Island Girl.

Here is why I booked this marina rather than the Municipal marina where we stayed last time. This one has a POOL! And a hot tub! Woohoooo!

The marina building was really big and nice, with laundry, showers, and a huge lounge.

This marina is right next to where the S.S. Badger docks. It is an old historic steam powered car ferry that runs across Lake Michigan from Ludington to Manitowoc Wisconsin. It’s been in service since 1953, but didn’t appear to be running today. I asked the marina dock hands, and they said that someone in the crew had Covid, so they suspended sailings until Aug. 19.

Kenny really wanted to wash the boat, but we rarely have a marina with a pool, so we went and enjoyed it for an hour or so and visited with some locals.

There are a couple of breweries in town. The Ludington Bay Brewery is closed on Tuesdays. Darn staff shortages, anyway! But the Jamesport Brewing Company is open today, so we’ll go there. It is more of a restaurant, but sounded good, and it’s just across the street from the marina. Kenny asked how long of a walk, so being a smarty pants, I asked the google for directions so that it would tell me a professional opinion on how many minutes to walk there. Well – apparently it’s going to take us 2 days and 4 hours. WHAT?! 😳. And we’re going to need some divine assistance, because we have to walk across Lake Michigan TWICE, and it’s 285 miles total. Here is our route. Kenny said it wasn’t that important – there’s beer on the boat!

Here is the close up of our starting point and destination. Silly Google!

Well Mr. Google… we took a shortcut, thank you very much. Sure enough – the back of the building was right across the street from the marina. They had a big back deck that was in the sunshine, but it was HOT in the sun, so we were fine to be seated inside.

I think it’s an old building that has been repurposed. They only had a few beers on tap, so I had a really nice triple berry cider with my dinner.

Our daughter Shannon sent some pictures of our triplet grandbabies. This one made be laugh…

… so I added a caption to it. Shannon said that she feels this way every day – these three babies are exhasting. Adorable, but exhausting.

We walked around town a little bit on our way back to the marina. There is an ice cream factory here, but we were both too full from dinner to stop. There is a really nice park here between the two marinas, and I remember that there were some really neat sculptures, but I don’t recall this one. It is a woman with a baby and young child standing and waiting for a train.

The plaque said that The “Dummy Train” ran from Ludington to Epworth starting in 1895 to carry thousands of summer residents to the Lake Michigan shore to escape the summer heat. The advent of the automobile diminished passenger trail travel and the last run was made in 1919. I don’t know why the name “Dummy”. 🤷‍♀️. Doesn’t seem very nice.

Just a shot from the park towards our marina.

We had a really pretty sunset. There were three big fancy new go-fast boats docked behind us that were all partying together. They weren’t loud or obnoxious, but they all three had their own music playing, yet everybody was all on one boat. So WE had all kinds of music from our position, even though they only heard the music from the boat that they were all sitting on. Oh well.

Red sky at night, sailors delight. 😁😎

Tomorrow we have another long 65 mile or so day planned. We’re going to skip a couple of places and head to someplace we’ve never been…. Grand Haven. We have two nights reserved there, and the weather is looking amazing. At this rate, we’ll get to Chicago before September first.