Milwaukee

         When we left Sheboygan, the weather was good enough to allow us to get all the way to Milwaukee.  We had Port Washington earmarked for a destination if the Lake was too lumpy, but Lake Michigan laid down enough for us to travel the 44 nautical miles to Milwaukee harbor.  

We entered the breakwater and made for the inner basin next to Discovery World.  When I realized this was immediately offshore of the SummerFest grounds, I started looking up to see if there was a music festival this weekend.  SummerFest, for those who don’t know, is a two week lakefront festival of music from the end of June through the fourth of July.  The grounds consist of multiple stages - the jazz stage, the country stage, the rock stage, the local stage, etc - and people spend the entire day moving from one music venue to the next.  It’s fabulous.  During the rest of the summer there are various international music festivals over long weekends: German Fest was the end of July.  Festa Italiana will be toward the end of September.  Fiesta Mexican is the end of August.  Irish Fest started yesterday, I told Dan, and runs through Sunday.  (We arrived in Milwaukee on Friday afternoon, August 18th.)

    We were anchored right in front of the Lakefront Stage, which faced us, and turned out to be the one that offered music until close to midnight.  They were doing soundchecks when we arrived, and we could hear the musicians saying “I need more bass” and “the drums could be louder” so we pretty much knew what we were in for.  

Just before sunset, John from the nearby anchored sailboat came over with his whaler offering pizza and wine on his boat.  He’d been anchored behind us, but moved forward of us to accommodate rafting up with his friends Peter and Amy on their sailboat Dagny.  Peter is a photographer and immediately asked for Dan’s phone so he could snap pictures of us and the Willie Dawes.  Turns out they were all from the area and they all offered their services and advice.  Peter and Amy also wanted to know more about traveling the river system down to the Gulf of Mexico.  They aren’t Loopers, but plan to go to the Bahamas for the winter and will be following the Great Loop crowd down.  We had wonderful evening trading stories while Irish Fest treated us to loud Irish rock music in the not-so-distant background.

On Saturday we scoped out Center Point Marine in the Milwaukee River.  This is the place we’ll be hauling out on Monday.  It’s right on the riverfront, in the middle of an industrial area.  This boatyard has no marina, it’s a service yard mainly for day boat owners who keep their pontoons and runabouts there.  Dan spoke with some of the workers there and got a good feel for the yard.  We spent the rest of the day walking around the lakefront and making preparations for the coming haul-out and our upcoming trip back to Boston by car.   

Sunday my sister Terry came to take us out to Mukwonago to spend a nice afternoon with her son Jeremy and his family.  I don’t see my nieces and nephews often enough, it was great to have a meal with these guys, and to get updated on their lives and all their activities. 

Monday we took the Willie Dawes to Center Pointe and put her on the hard.  Dan was pleased with his initial inspection of her bottom - looks like all she’ll need is paint.  We spent the day readying the interior for some serious flea killer bombs and packed up our rental car for the trip back to Boston.  We moved some stuff to Terry’s house, as she’ll be hosting us for a couple weeks in September.  The plan is to drive out to Boston, spend some quality time with family, attend Dan’s niece’s wedding, and head back to Wisconsin by the end of August.  The Willie Dawes will stay on the hard for a couple weeks while Dan paints and putters, and I will earn my keep at my sister’s house by preparing suppers.  The locks in Illinois won’t be open until Oct 1, so we can take our time visiting family and friends and doing whatever biggish maintenance needs to be done.  

Willie Dawes hauled out.

Back in Wisconsin

         We left Escanaba on Monday, August 14th.  We had a following sea but it was still a little lumpy.  Fortunately things settled down as we got more south into Green Bay.  We had set up several plans for destinations, but at the day wore on and the coming week’s weather started to look iffier, we thought we’d get as far as we could when we could, so we ended up in Sturgeon Bay, the cut between Green Bay and Lake Michigan, for the night. 

Sturgeon Bay lighthouse

        It was at this time we realized Tommie had managed to pick up some fleas.  Dan and I are two minds as to the origin - it’s my opinion she’s probably had them for awhile - but she did get off the boat one of the nights we were in Escanaba and Dan thinks she picked them up at that time.  (Dan spotted her sitting on a neighboring sailboat in the marina, watching us.  We’re not sure how long she was off the boat or if she had made it to shore.) Anyway, anyone who’s had to deal with a flea infestation knows what kind of trouble Tommie caused for us.  Dan made two trips into the town of Sturgeon Bay to pick up flea-killing supplies, after he’d given her a bath with his tea-tree shampoo.  Since then we’ve spent a lot of time cleaning.  We took a marina slip in Manitowoc, Wisconsin for Tuesday night, and while I spent hours in the laundry room washing all our bedding, all Tommie’s bedding, the pillow covers, etc, Dan spent hours vacuuming every nook and cranny on the boat.  We treated Tommie with Frontline and she’s been combed almost every fifteen minutes to collect what fleas we can. 

Manitowoc Light

Needless to say, we’re all a little stressed out.  The last time we went through this, we had four cats and a house we were trying to sell, and active fleas jumping all around, biting our ankles.  At least this time we haven’t seen any fleas except in the combings and nobody’s been bitten.  After all the laundry - I ran out of soap! - and vacuuming, we walked to town for a sunset dinner at a marginal restaurant overlooking the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.  The food was nothing to recommend, but the view was nice and to just sit and relax for a little bit was priceless.  

We left Manitowoc in the morning (we’ll have to go back by car to see that museum) because we had a very short weather window before gale forces and storms set in for the next couple of days.  So we’re here in Sheboygan, at a marina that offers hot tub, where we can relax as we plan next week’s logistics.  We’ll be hauling the boat for a little bottom work, and renting a car to drive home for a visit and to attend Dan’s niece’s wedding.  Let’s hope we’ve killed off the fleas before putting Tommie in the car to travel with us.  

 Who would have thought one cat could make so much work?

Escanaba

         We did go ashore at Jackson Harbor on Washington Island, to get a look at the small maritime museum they have there.  Dan’s been interested in learning about the whitefish fishing industry.  But, the Pease curse of “closed today” has followed us even to Wisconsin.  It was Thursday, and the museum is not open on Thursdays.  So we peeked in the windows and walked around the locked buildings, got a look at the whitefish fishing boat, and went back to the Willie Dawes to raise anchor.  

We sailed back up the Bay to Little Bai de Noc and found a pretty place to anchor at the very northern cove.  We were all alone and this suited us just fine.  Beautiful sunrise!

Friday (Aug we headed to Escanaba.  We had reserved a slip in the marina there for Saturday, but the weather was looking pretty snotty and we thought we’d come in a day early.  It was a good decision, as the wind was picking up and whitecaps were forming.  We were happy to get out of it in the placid man-made cove where the marina and yacht club reside.  

Escanaba is a jewel of a small town!  No sooner had we finished tying up when a local boater came over to introduce himself and offer his services.  “If you need anything, or want to go anywhere, just let me know.”  He told us, offering his personal business card.  A few minutes later another boater hailed Dan and offered us half a bag of ice, and shortly after that another local boater came over with a flower to welcome us and offer her services.  That doesn’t happen just anywhere!  The last welcomer, Marilyn, was actually from Maine and went to Cony High School in Augusta where she knew Dan’s Aunt Ginny, who taught English there.  

We spent Friday with boat chores and on Saturday set off to explore the town a bit.  Right across the street from the marina is the local historical society museum and lighthouse.  The entire area beyond the lighthouse is landfill from when they dredged this recreational harbor.  On the other side of it all is the commercial harbor, where in Escanaba’s hay days, it was a major port for shipping lime, lumber, and especially iron ore.  The museum covers the history very well, with many artifacts from the oldest settlers of town, the industries, and the railroad that connected everything.  Very well done.  We toured the building and the lighthouse before walking into town. 

Escanaba is the county seat, so there are many municipal service buildings as well as the courthouse, and then the long, wide downtown which features an eclectic array of things from fitness centers to wedding shops.  In front of the library is the beginning of scaled solar system, the first one featuring a basketball-sized globe of the sun.  The planets themselves are far too small to show in actual size, so there are just simple signposts with plaques describing them, down from the sidewalk in order, and in scaled range from the sun.  (We have something similar along the Rt 1 in upstate Maine, beginning north of Houlton and ending in Presque Isle.)  What a great thing to have along the downtown stretch!

Mercury.  Venus and Earth are in the background

    That evening Dan’s good friend Whit, a fellow deckhand from Dan’s schooner days back in the early 1980s, and his wife Pam came down to the boat to pick us up for supper.  They have a farm nearby where they spend summers.  We haven’t seen them in ages, and it was great to see them now and to catch up.  We had dinner together that night and the next day they brought us to their farm for a leisurely meal, lots of laughter and some songs.  Pam showed off her hairdressing skills by giving Dan a haircut suitable for his niece’s wedding (coming up at the end of August.)  We had a great time with them and agreed not to let thirty years go by before we see them again. 

Whit, Pam, Kathy & Dan

Here’s Tommie, not enjoying the lumpy passages we made.

Green Bay

         Monday (August 7) we were up early to take advantage of the calm.  We hugged the coast and rounded the point into upper Green Bay, into Big Bay de Noc.  (Noc, if you’re wondering, is/was a Native American tribe thought to be Algonquin.)  Our destination was Snail Shell Harbor, and the little town of Fayette.  

Fayette was a company town, owned and run by an iron smelting company.  Workers and other town businesses lived on this little peninsula.  Many of the buildings are still standing, including the iron ore factory, the charcoal kilns that provided the needed fuel, and the lime kiln that processed lime from the nearby dolomite cliffs to help separate the impurities from the iron ore during the smelting process.  The natural harbor provided transportation for needed imports and product exports.  Today the whole thing is a Michigan State Park, criss-crossed with trails dotted with placards explaining how things used to be.  The parks people have done a good job with preserving what’s left and restoring some of the houses.  Their welcome center provides a diorama of the entire town.  We spent hours there both on Monday afternoon and again on Tuesday morning roaming around, peeking in windows of the locked buildings and walking through the ones that were open for self-guided tours.  There is a very small marina with fourteen slips for people that come visit by boat, otherwise one has to drive to the UP to visit this place.  For anyone interested in industrial history this is a fascinating place to visit. 

We left Fayette on Tuesday afternoon to anchor in nearby South River Bay, on the advice of a fellow cruiser.  The shoreline is just forest - no homes, no lights, no roads.  We spent a quiet night with only one other boat in this anchorage, such a treat!  

South River Bay

        Today we dipped south to Washington Island, off the tip of the Door County Peninsula of Wisconsin.   We saw pelicans today.  Pelicans!  Here in fresh water Green Bay!  Apparently the American White Pelican started coming to this area about ten years ago.  It’s been odd being in these Great Lakes, where the water is not salty and there are no sea mammals (or sharks or mola mola), but to also see pelicans here is surreal.  We didn’t go ashore today because there were supposed to be major thunderstorms.  I’ll save shore leave for the next blog.  

I’ve been remiss about Tommie’s portion of the blog.  Here is an embarrassing (to her) picture of one of her first overboard drills, when she was a kitty.  She’s bigger now but she still looks like that when she’s wet.

Mackinaw City and Lake Michigan

 Or I should say Lake Michigan and Mackinaw City.  We left St. Ignace on Thursday morning, prepped for a long day to get into Lake Michigan and over to Beaver Island.  Lake Michigan, however, had other ideas.  The “waves two feet or less” forecast were easily four feet, with 15 knots of westerly wind pushing them our way.  We pounded into it for about an hour after passing under the Mackinac Bridge, and decided to turn around instead of lurching forward like that for another five or six hours.  Instead of going back to St. Ignace, we went to Mackinaw City at the top of the mitten that is Michigan. 

Mackinac, Mackinaw … both are pronounced the same, the woman at the Mackinaw Municipal Marina told me.  The spelling ‘Mackinac’ comes of the French who named and held onto the area above the Lakes; the British who took over lower Michigan changed the spelling to Mackinaw to better reflect the pronunciation.  Mackinac Straits, Island, and Bridge, are all pronounced the same as Mackinaw City.

The City is cute tourist town with more fudge and t-shirts, being the gateway to both Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Mackinac Island.  We spent two days in the marina here, waiting for a good weather window.  The nearby park was filled with a re-enactment settlement of French, Indians, and British and Thursday they held a trading fair which offered homemade soaps, baskets, and beaded moccasins and things like axe throwing contests.  We spent a time there as well as browsing through the shops, and we went to an afternoon matinee of the movie Oppenheimer.  It’s been a long time since we went to see a movie in a theater!  

Saturday, August 5th, our weather window arrived and we left for Beaver Island.  This time the wind and waves were behind us, still a bit lumpy but not like Thursday.  Beaver Island has a bit of history in the Mormon legacy - a sect of the Latter Day Saints settled here, started making their own rules, and declared themselves their own kingdom, separate from the US.  It’s in Wikipedia if you want to look it up.  Due to the wind forecast, we ended up not anchoring there, but in a snug cove on nearby Garden Island.  

Sunday we hoped to make another open-water crossing over to Big Bay de Noc

 in upper Green Bay, but once again Lake Michigan had its own plans for us.  This time the two-feet-or-less waves were three-feet-or-more on the quarter beam.  Lurching over them to move forward is one thing, rolling back and forth through them is another.  We put up with it for a couple of hours and then decided to change our heading and let them push us north to Manistique instead.  

Manistique is a small town with a breakwater and lots of beaches fronted by a two mile walking path.  One end goes directly into town, the other end is a nice walk along the shore.  We went that way on our walk.  We did find a very large, very nice grocery store, and bought what we could carry back without too much trouble.  There weren’t many people on the walk or the beaches, but we were approached by a little boy very eager to tell us that grasshoppers had wings.  “That’s so cool!”  Dan replied, and the little guy, bursting to impart knowledge, told us they could hop and fly!  Awesome! There is nothing as fun as seeing things through the eyes of a four year old.  

St.Ignace & Mackinac Island

         Tuesday the Lake was again like glass.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed that we have this kind of luck throughout our Great Lake travels.  We had a beautiful cruise from Detour Village all the way to Mackinac Island.  We thought we’d cruise along its south shore to get a view of the harbor and quickly realized why other cruisers were skirting the island on its north shore: the constant wakes of the high-speed ferries zipping tourists to Mackinac made things especially turbulent.  But we got a glimpse of the Grand Hotel and the Fort as we went by on our way to the municipal marina at St. Ignace.  We’d been advised to not stay in Mackinac harbor - either in the marina or at anchor - but to stay in St. Ignace and take one of those high speed ferries.  After seeing multiple ferries zoom back and forth every fifteen minutes from three different mainland cities, we agreed this was a good decision.  

As we approached St. Ignace, a USCG boat turned toward us and flipped on their blue light.  Really, we thought?  Right here?  But they had decided to come pay us a random visit for an inspection and there was little to do but idle and allow them to come aboard.  Actually, they were very nice, and we passed the inspection with flying colors, but by the time they were finished we were right outside the breakwater of the St. Ignace marina.  

Today we were tourists on vacation.  We took the 0730 ferry to Mackinac Island and spent a good hour walking around.  Nothing was open yet, but the streets were busy with the horse-drawn flatbed trailers delivering supplies and goods to the stores and restaurants, and the workers were biking down the hills to their jobs.  Motorized vehicles are not allowed on this island, though there are exceptions for e-bikes, lawn mowers, and forklifts. 

We walked through Marquette Park and down Market Street, reading the plaques, and spent a few minutes admiring the Little Stone Church, a small congregational church built of stones from the island and decorated with Tiffany stained glass windows. 

        Then we got aboard a carriage tour to spend the rest of the morning exploring the island under the witty guide of the carriage drivers.  Our first driver was from Romania and had never worked with horses before, our second was a young woman from Texas who had “done some ranchin’” and admitted she hadn’t known this place even existed prior to April, when one of her high school friends (yes, this girl graduated high school this year) told her about this job giving carriage tours on an island in Michigan.  Both women were personable and fun, and we had a great tour as well as a gossipy history lesson of the island.  

The first part of the tour concentrated on the inhabited section of the island. In the middle of the tour, for an extra fee, we visited the Butterfly House, a greenhouse with live butterflies flying all around.  We slowly walked through the plant displays, watching where we put our feet and hands, because the butterflies really were everywhere.  If you stand still, they might even land on you.  It was enchanting.  

    The rest of the tour took place in the forested state park, which constitutes about 80% of the island.  We passed through the cemeteries of the Catholics, Protestants, and the military, had a brief stop to ogle the arch rock, and learned a little bit about the Native American folklore, the geology, and the military history.  

Back in the town proper, Dan and I had lunch at the Harbor Tavern and then did what all the other tourists were doing.  We shopped for souvenirs and sampled a lot of fudge.  It was like being on vacation!