We woke to very dense fog this morning. The break wall wasn't even visible, which is the wall that protects the harbor. We hung out at Rogers City till the fog lifted, which was the plan, but really never happened, because we got a bit antsy & left @ noon. What was happening, was the fog would lift a bit, then descend back on us, sometimes the sun would even peek through, then the fog would return. When I was a school nurse, we loved these days, we would have the whole day off. So we left Rogers City in fog @ 12 noon. Day Dreams was in the lead today. Waterford was following about 1/4 of a mile behind us. Sometimes we could see her, sometimes not. We passed 40 mile Point Lighthouse built in 1896, in thick fog, unable to see, so no pics sorry. It’s on land, north of Rogers City. We have very good electronics, so we felt safe & we did try out our fog horn, which worked great. We only passed one boat the whole 5 hours & it was a sailboat traveling south. We spotted it on the radar long before visualizing it with binoculars. Our radar worked great. We hardly have ever seen a boat on any of our runs so far on this adventure. This great lake & we feel like we are the only ones out here. That is except for the muffle bugs. We were hit hard with those today & the small slow flys. Millions of them!! Again, luckily we are snug as a rug in our pilot house.
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| 14 foot shoal light built in 1930 |
We arrived @ Cheboygan County Marina around 5:00 PM. We entered the Cheboygan river and the Marina is just inside the entrance. Cheboygan is home to the Coast Guard ice cutter ship The Mackinaw II; commissioned in 2006, 240 ft long, 58 foot wide, drafts 16 feet & has Azipods drives, 9000 horsepower apiece & they can rotate 360 degrees to direct their thrust in any direction.(Doug had me add all that for the guys). It's job is to keep shipping channels open in the St Mary’s River between Lake Huron & the Sault Ste Marie (locks), which is nick named the SOO. The first Mackinaw ship, was 290 feet, 78 feet wide & was built in Toledo, OH in 1943. She was retired in 2006, her home also was in Cheboygan. It is a museum ship in Mackinaw City currently. Why didn't Toledo get it back? someone work on that, please.
We traveled 34 miles today, cum of 317, the air temperature actually hit 60 today, no wind & no waves, again the lake was like a mill pond (not sure where that term came from, but hope you get my meaning).
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| Can you see the Mackinaw bridge? |
The sun did show itself after we arrived here, so after dinner we took a walk to catch the sunset. We planned to stay 2 nights here because Doug likes to say the name "Cheboygan" so we figured this would be a fun place to stay and a bigger city. Well, it was a fun place to stay, but it wasn't too much bigger of a city. The fog had rolled back in after sunset and was still with us in the morning, so darn I had to sleep in! But by 11:00 AM, the sun was out & Doug had shorts & a t-shirt on to wash the boat and there were no bugs-yahoo! Our boats had been literally covered with bugs yesterday when we pulled into the marina. There were 2 types of bugs; muffle bugs & those little slow flys. Today there are no bugs anywhere to be found. Sorta weird!
We got the dinghy's down, (I know, "Doug is dinghy & so is Jan") and we took off down the Cheboygan River. Passing the Coast Guard Cutter, the crew were all working hard on general maintenance stuff. Not much up the river, but it was a splendid day to be out, basking in the sun on the water. We did go far enough to see the lock which takes a boat to the inland waterway to Mullet Lake & then on to Indian River, so one can almost cross the state of Michigan by water, but it doesn't let you get into Lake Michigan.
This was a beautiful day! We enjoyed dinner on the back deck & walked to the beach again for a stunning sunset.
The weather radar says you are having storms @ home, hope all are safe & secure. We are.
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| Thirsty Duck |
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| The duck drank too much & got sad cuz it was missing everyone, Don't Jump! |
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| We came to the duck's rescue, all is OK |
