A look at the weather this morning had me thinking that, even though we had paid for tonight on the dock, we should be on our way. Making miles was more valuable to me than a lost dock fee. Deb was of the same mind but wanted to wait until the marina opened for business to be sure a refund wasn't an option. We waited. She checked. And the good folks at the marina were glad to offer a refund. At 0830 I backed out of the slip with a bit of a crowd watching. Not sure why, since there was zero wind or current. The biggest challenge was making the turn around the end of the dock with a full sized Cruise Ship tied up at the pier adjacent to the marina, its beam filling about half of the waterway. I also managed not to run over any of the dozens of geese that had gathered. Apparently Cruise ship passengers have a habit of feeding geese. And the geese remember.
According to the marina folks, it was a good day to leave. Apparently Mackinac Island gets even more crazy when a Cruise Ship dumps its passenger load ashore for the day. I would much rather be where we are than where we were.
It took just shy of six hours and we were anchored in a nice little bay located at the northeast end of Beaver Island. We are roughly 38 nm due west of Mackinac Island. West isn't really the direction I want to be going. But one needs to go at least 30nm in that direction, through the Mackinac Straights, to get from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. There is a lot of commercial traffic using those straights. We saw two large freighters and two large barges along the way. Fortunately, there is a lot of room for professional Captains doing what they do. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of room for a less professional Captain in a go-fast Yacht. This clown blazed by our starboard side at something like 40 knots and throwing a huge wake. He came up so fast and so close that I didn't have enough time to turn until he was just ahead of us. Full rudder deflection got me just enough into the wake that the hit, though splashing water onto our foredeck, didn't roll the boat too hard. I might have uttered a harsh word or two. But Marcus Aurelius, a stoic writer and Emperor, once taught; “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.” He could have added, “And if traveling over water, there will certainly be some stupid boater tricks from people with more boat than brains.”
I try to remember the same before driving as well. Being prepared for stupid makes it easier to just shrug and remember this is exactly what was expected.
In any case we didn't go far out of our way to be here. And it is a really nice little anchorage pretty much well protected no matter which way the wind blows. The only trick is to find a sandy spot on which to drop the hook as much of the bottom is covered with seagrass. Which actually turned out to be pretty easy even though we are in twenty plus feet of water. Standing on the bow, Deb could see the bottom well enough to guide me directly over a sand spot. The hook grabbed on the first try. We haven't seen water this clear since the last time we were in the Bahamas.
What happens next is still an open question. It may be that we will have just enough of a weather window tomorrow to actually put some miles in to the south tomorrow. But it is big open water. The window will have to be a pretty sure thing before we venture out there. On the other hand, if tomorrow isn't a go we may well be here for the better part of five days. There are thunderstorms and winds up to 30 knots mentioned on some forecasts. Though not likely, maximum wave hight in that kind of wind with the a fetch of more than 60 nm could be as high as 8 feet. And it would be directly on our beam. No thank you. I would rather sit here for five days than risk that for one minute.
There are several boats anchored around us. It will interesting to see if any if any of us leave in the morning. And if it threatens to get really ugly, there is a dock just a couple of hundred yards away.
Bye bye Mackinac Island
We passed a couple really large ships - over 600' long for a couple of them.
Approaching the Mackinac Island Bridge
You wouldn't want to rent this one. It definitely belonged to the cormorants.
Some interesting boats in the anchorage at St. James
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