It’s Been a minute……

Or 76 days to be exact….

First order of Business,

Mike and I have decided that the trawler life just isn't for us and that we are going to take up sailing. I know! Who does that at this stage of our life? We’ve always been known to go against the grain a bit though so, it just seems fitting….

Wouldn’t you have it, a sailboat took up residence at our house. A nice little 30 foot Catalina. Just waiting for us to give her some tender loving care and off we can go in January and sail into the sunset.

Seriously,

All the docks in Sarasota Bay and this boat finds her way to our dock during Idalia!

Eta took out our scout and our dock and this time Mike was soooo prepared giving the scout it’s very best chance at survival. Our dock must have a bullseye 🎯on it, but on a good note, the scout did survive and this girl didn’t run into her. Always a silver lining….

I hope all of our southern friends fared better than this girl did.

On that note:

Happy September Everyone,

Mike, Ollie, Gizmo and I are back on the boat. We have actually been on the boat for almost a week.

We arrived in Detroit last Wednesday to a Thunderstrom ⚡️and drove to Bay harbor in the rain on Thursday. 🌧️ Vermont weather just followed us.....I should have taken a picture of the blinding rain, but didn’t…..

📸These are of Ollie and Gizzy chillin out waiting for the plane.

I have labeled all of my pictures- followed their instructions, figured they would show— but no…😣 I will keep trying —I am thinking I need to do it on my laptop. Wix has a lot of quirks with this and formatting, but chrome is better than safari and I bet the laptop is better than the IPad. My computer is out of commission though, so everyone will have to live with the quirks of Wix formatting that you will see throughout …

We have added Starlink to our boat though, so at least we should have service everywhere moving forward and I can keep up with posts moving forward. I’m afraid this first one is a long one.🤦‍♀️

We are currently hangin out in Traverse City Michigan, and we have already traveled a bit already.

But first, a bit of a back story....

The electronics arch on our boat:

It’s a little long with no real pictures so bear with me and then we will get to Mackinac Island. Or just skip over this section. 🙄

When we bought our trawler, we decided to put a custom electronics arch on the boat in place of the mast that was on it.

Why? the big Mast gave us a 26 foot air draft which eliminated us from being able to get under any bridge in our area of Sarasota without waiting for a bridge opening. We had it on the 34 and it was just a PIA. The Mast was also a boom which raised and lowered our tender and we had no use for that as we put a freedom lift on the back of our boat.

Beneteau had just released their 35 model and they put an arch on it since the tender in that model was stored below. We liked the look at went with it.

But the arch was also limiting at 17 feet air draft and we discussed hinging it. It was decided that hinging compromised the arch too much so we didn’t do it.

We made sure it would clear 17 feet fixed, non-opening bridge on the Hudson, knowing it would some day make that trek. Guess what? The bridge was under construction with scaffolding on the bottom of the bridge when we rolled through back in 2020 and we had to drop the arch anyways. It was really difficult and the arch didn’t really like it either. It then took 4 people to raise it in Whitehall.

The arch was not the perfect solution at the end of the day.

Move forward to Canada,

🇨🇦Many moons ago --or at least it feels that way--June actually -we were in Canada on the canals with several low swing bridges and were cursing our arch a little bit.

🌉In these northern waters, there are plenty of lower bridges and we wanted to be able to completely take it down.

As we were pondering if we really wanted to drop it again for all of the canals, we saw several trawlers with nice electronics poles that were hinged and they dropped quite easily and more importantly, could go back up with only one person doing the job.

💡Perfect! This is what we really wanted. Why hadn’t we done this in the first place? Without the pole, our air draft is like 12 feet. We can get under soo much more with the lower draft.

We decided to drop the arch and replace the arch in Michigan with a pole. Mike preordered all of the equipment and arranged for the pole to be installed in Michigan over the summer. When we arrived in Michigan, Mike got rid of the arch and met with company to do the work. Easy peasy they said, 1/2 a day....

I thought that when we returned to Bay Harbor I would be showing off our new pole, but no.... We weren't totally surprised as Mike had been emailing them all summer and it really wasn't sounding good. Like everyone else, out of sight, out of mind.

The most important thing of all of this, is that we had reservations, in Mackinac island over this past weekend, and I am not comfortable taking this lake on without a really strong radio, wind gauge, radar, etc. Call me chicken…..

But Lake Michigan is one big ass lake and we had already tempted fate getting to Bay Harbour without the electronics. However, Mackinac was one of the big looper list items for this trip.

To make a long story short, or still long——- we looked at like 6 different weather apps and decided to brave the trip to Mackinac and bring MaD to Traverse City afterwards as it is much closer to their office than Bay Harbor was and they agreed to fix it all on Tuesday- today . And guess what, they are upstairs working on it. Woo Hoo. So, maybe a picture will come tomorrow.

Enough of all of that, first stop was backtracking to Mackinac Island-

📸maps and Bye Bye Bay Harbor

Mackinac Island

We left Bay Harbour feeling a little exposed and headed for Mackinac on Saturday. It was a perfect day. Beautiful, green water, no waves to speak of. It took us about 3.5 hours and we had a great run.

📸 Pictures are of trip up to Mackinac. It was beautful , but there is no doubt cold weather is not far off… Yes, our warm blooded Ollie was all covered up…

Mackinac was awesome. We really enjoyed our stay and it was worth backtracking for. I can say that now as we never needed our electronics on the trip, But we will feel a lot more comfortable when they are back. We will be whole again.

A few facts about Mackinac:

Mackinac was shortened from MiIchillmackinac and is pronounced "Mackinaw". While Mackinac island and straits has remained with the spelling, when the British founded Mackinaw City just across the straits, they put a "w" in the spelling instead of a "c" to represent the pronounciation. Hence, Mackinac and Mackinaw

Mackinac Island is a lovely 8.2 mile in circumference island in the straits of Mackinac, connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

It is a lovely town with Victorian and coastal houses. Main Street has plenty of shops and bars/restaurants.

📸— Cool houses and loved the flowers.

The only way to get to Mackinac is by ferry or private boat.

Mackinac has no motorized vehicles. (almost). It is all horses and bikes. Why almost? We did learn that their emergency vehicles -- Firetrucks and Ambulances, are gas powered. We also saw forklifts loading up the ferry, so that docks have a few powered vehicles of their own..

📸- If you need a taxi, this is your ride.

The Grand Hotel is quite Grand with its own history, but is the one place we were unable to visit this trip.

📸. If you are lucky enough to stay at the Grand Hotel, this will be your carriage.

Golf carts are only allowed on the golf course at the Grand Hotel and cannot leave the course.

Mackinac houses the governors summer mansion. It's a beautiful mansion that was sold to Michigan for $ 15,000, its worth a few million now, and agreed if they ever sold the property it had to be returned to the original owner for a sum of $15,000. Such a deal.

📸 Governors Mansion

All deliveries to and from the island are picked up from either UPS , USPS, Fed Ex etc offices and are delivered to and from the ferry in horse drawn carriages by a third party company. Mail is not delivered throughout the island. People must go get it.

📸 1. Unloading the horses to load up the ferry

2. A Forklift loading the ferry - yes, also fuel driven

3.. A wagon awaiting pick-up at a local merchant

4. UPS Office

5. A bike moving some luggage along

Our "bus tour" of the island was two horse drawn carriages in- lieu of the double decker bus. I much preferred the horses. We traded carriages in the middle of tour- Hence two.

📸 Carriage one and two - I need to find better pics🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️

The water is beautiful in Mackinac. Green in some parts and blue in others.

📸My old camera just didn’t do it justice. However- Apple just officially announced their newest iPhone- I have been awaiting its arrival and there will be one coming to me in the near future..😎

Our Visit:

We arrived to warmth and sunshine on Saturday and really spent the afternoon just walking around and getting a lay of the land.

Right out of the gate, not hearing any motor vehicles and just hearing the Clip Clop of horses hooves was music to my ears.....oh and the smell, took me back to my horse days. It made me want to get involved again. Not sure Mike felt that way about the smell, but he did fine.

Oh and Gizmo, he met his match and stayed away from those huge hooves that were bigger than him.

We had a lovely dinner on the water at The Cottage that night and settled back to the boat pretty early.

📸 View from dinner- yes, an early one for us…

We commented on the lack of bugs and left the doors open all evening . But then, I saw them, bugs- mosquitoes everywhere. 🦟🦟. I was like, “NOT AGAIN”!!! It was not nearly as bad, but I did spend 20 minutes killing them all and our ceiling was covered in splotches again!

📸 If you look, you can see splotches of the bugs, Baie Fin was like 500 times worse 🤢

The next morning, the realization came, they were just knats! We weren't going to be killed by the little guys and I guess I am just a tad Gun-shy. Or Bug-shy...😂

On Sunday, The weather was colder and rainy at times. We biked around the perimeter of the island-- just over 8 miles-- and then took an interior tour of the island via the horse carriage. The island is 75% park and is really gorgeous. If you are looking for sandy beaches though, you will not find them here. It's all rocky. Some small, some large.

Bike Ride—

📸1. The Arch Rock

2. and 3. Biking along the water- no sand here….

4.-6. On the other side of the road is the forest.

7. The Devils Kitchen- Legend has it that the bad spirits captured people and ate them there. Hmmm the limestone is blackened due to the fires from such spirits, cooking the people.

8. This was fun to drive around. 🐶🐾🤣 Those electric bikes of ours-- Not allowed. We rented bikes and put the dogs in an actual crate. It wasn't the easiest for me to cart the crate around, but it was still a fun ride.

Carriage Ride-

📸 1. The Little Stone Church- Mackinac is very literal in all of their naming of things.. you know what you are looking at anyways. This is a very popular church to be married in.

2. We saw the arch again

3. If you are buried on the island, this will be your chariot to your final resting place

4. One of the two cemeteries

5. The Pro Shop at the Grand Hotel

6. The mayors house. She is the longest serving mayor in the country- since 1975…

7. A not so tiny - not stone church on Main Street.

8. Some of the birds of Mackinac

We are now starting to be in the fold with several other loopers and had a pretty big Docktail party before heading to a great dinner with a couple we met from S. Burlington VT. As it turns out the husband worked for IDX and Mike and Walt had a lot to talk about. It was ironic and fun to enjoy an evening with fellow Vermonters.

I did think that Mackinac would have cute little foodie markets and the like, and that was a big no. They have the oldest family run market in the country that is completely unremarkable. Not even a picture.

No one comes here to cook and the fact is, the town has a year round residency of 500 with one public school- I’m thinking those teenagers are doing everything they can to get to the mainland…

We had planned to stay until Tuesday, but between weather and needing to get these electronics finished, we left monday, for Traverse City.

It was rainy and a bit rougher waters on Monday, but nothing we couldn't handle and no fog, so it was a win.

📸 Good bye Mackinac- hope to return some day

Hello Traverse City - I avoided pics of the rain and rolling waves in Lake Michigan…

Last night we met even more loopers and talked about how to get down this lake on which side. The locals that were here, suggested the Wisconsin side, at least for part of it... We shall see.

Today the electronics are getting reinstalled with the pole working and it is still windy and rainy, so its a good day to get caught up on things.

Tomorrow looks much nicer, just windy so we will head out and explore a little. It looks like a very nice city here. So far it reminds us of Burlington.

That's it for now. Thursday is our forecasted departure day from here and right now, it is looking to be a destination of Leland, Michigan. From there, we will have an easy ( hopefully ) crossing to Wisconsin, should we decide to go that route.

I promise the next post will be much shorter!!!

Final Note: Fins and Bubbles up everyone and keep the party going. (Responsibly) Jimmy Buffet was a legend that will be truly missed! He seemed immortal.

MaDog signing off