St. Ignace, MI to Harbor Springs Municipal Marina, MI

Date             August 21, 2011 

Day                54

Departure      St. Ignace, Michigan 8:50 am  

Arrival          Harbor Springs Municipal Marina 2:40 pm

Miles                54.6 

Cumulative   1219.1

NOTE: For a larger view of each picture, click on the picture, then click again for an even larger view!

The day started off on the wrong foot when we overslept!  We had breakfast and moved the boat to the fuel dock to refuel.  The cost of diesel at St. Ignace was $3.99 a gallon.  A bargain after Canadian price of  $5.32 a US gallon!  We headed out to the Straits of Mackinac under a sunny, blue sky with little wind.  After passing through the Mackinac Bridge.....

Almost there,

and now we are directly under the bridge!!

we noticed a storm was approaching to the north of us. 

It got very dark over St. Ignace (where we had left from earlier) and then the thunder boomers came.  We watched the storm on radar and visually.  It stayed to the north of us, then went east of us and then south of us.  We heard a weather alert on the VHF radio issued by the Coast Guard, of a severe storm with gale winds and 1/2 inch hail.  We were very thankful that the storm circled us and did not affect us in any way!  Bob enjoys watching the ships.  So much so that he purchased a book to be able to identify who they are, how big they are, where they are registered and what type of vessel it is, ie self-unloader, bulk carrier or tanker.  The photo below is of the Federal Patroller.  It is 469 feet long, almost 75 feet wide and is a bulk carrier.  This ship is one of the smaller ones, we had seen one earlier that was 1004 feet long!

Freighter "Federal Patroller

As we neared our destination, another storm appeared.  We had hoped to beat it to the dock, but that was not the case.  The rain came down in buckets just as we approached the dock.  We were prepared with our rain gear on, but the wind was blowing so hard and the rain poured down both Bob and I were drenched from mid thigh down!  As luck would have it, as soon as the marina staff finished tying the lines on the dock, the rain stopped and the sun reappeared!  Well, at least everything on the bridge had a chance to dry out!  After a busy weather day, here is tonight's sunset.

Sunset over Little Traverse Bay