Day 354: Saturday, August 24, 2013
Port to Port: Mackinaw City to Beaver Island
Underway: 6:32 am Motor Off: 1:45 pm Miles Traveled: 41 Stayed At: Marina
Mile to Mile: We left the marina with high hopes that our favorable weather window would hold and allow us to make the long trek to Charlevoix without getting beat up. Well, it held for a few hours. In fact, we had a great sail until we turned south through the channel through Greys Reef. Even though the winds seemed fairly light, the waves had the whole length of Lake Michigan to build and then they hit the shallow water of the shoal. By the time we got through the shoals, we were regularly seeing 3-4 foot waves and rollers with a few 5+ footers thrown in just for the fun of it. The waves were manageable but we also slowed down going directly into the wind and waves and it would have taken another 7 hours of pounding to get to our original destination. We decided to fall off, put up the sails to steady the boat and head west to Beaver Island only a couple hours away. A good decision since the wind never let up and actually increased a little as we motorsailed at 6 mph to our new home for a couple of days – the wind isn’t supposed to let up until Monday afternoon.
We made it to the Beaver Island Marina without any problems and were pleasantly surprised. They have a nice lounge for boaters, good showers, decent internet and you can even rent a car to drive around the island sight seeing. This is a summer cottage community. You can only get here by boat or small airplane. I wasn’t expecting much at the local grocery store but ended up coming out with 4 bags of items some of which we have been looking for for many weeks. And the prices were amazingly normal – not like in Canada.
We had a nice surprise as we motored up to the dock – we found someone we know is already here – Ozel and Mary Ann on Freya. We met them back in Delaware City and . They had just come in from Charlevoix (going with the waves and wind) and are planning to travel down the west side of the lake. We met their neighbors Bob and Debbie on In My Element too who are also Loopers. What a fun reunion. Carina had met Freya back at when they got their mast stepped. We live in a strange strange world on this Loop. We can go for weeks and weeks in our home town and not see anyone we know but out here, on the Loop, if we don’t see someone we know after two or three days, we must be trying to hide.
We caught up on our respective adventures at docktails. We were originally going to have Kent and Jane over to share grilled pork loin (which Jane had given us several days ago after cleaning out her fridge) but she already had one in the slow cooker so we brought grilled red potatoes and salads and had a feast on Carina. One thing you learn on the Loop is you have to be flexible.
Even though this isn’t where we planned to be today and tomorrow and the next day, plans are meant to be changed. There are lots of hiking trails, quiet roads to bike and some interesting restaurants and shops to check out. And maybe, just maybe, we will find time for naps…or not.
