This morning was a bright crisp cold September morning with temperatures in the low 40’s, you could see your breath. Lots of steam coming off the water so we waited for the sun to warm it up a little.
We arrived back at the boat on Wednesday with anticipation of leaving Thursday but the wind predictions on Lake Michigan were not good as there were several cold fronts coming thru the area. We decided to wait until Saturday because it was supposed to be sunny, cool and not a great deal of wind.
Muskegon Lake was quite busy his morning with the fishermen that were out but nothing like the inlet river at the mouth of Muskegon Lake. There must have been 50 boats there and as we approached a ferry was coming in from Lake Michigan and the fisherman spread just enough to let the ferry thru and then closed ranks again. I slowed but we went thru and I blew the horn a couple of times but as long as I wasn’t going to hit their boat they stayed where they were. There were only a few fishermen on Lake Michigan so that was not a real issue.
Lake Michigan was pretty flat with no real wind so we headed directly for Hammond Indiana where I wanted to fill up before going the last 12 miles to Chicago. The winds were predicted to be out of the southeast for the morning and turning to the southwest in the afternoon. Well about 2 hours out the wind was from the southwest and getting stronger. We had 3+ footers with whitecaps so we tried several different headings to avoid the pounding and finally settled on going to South Haven with the waves on our stern. We spent a lot of time on the water for the actual distance we traveled down the Michigan shoreline.
South Haven was busy with fishermen and sail boaters although the traffic was not as bad as we had leaving Muskegon Lake. The inlet river into South Haven is the Black River. The South Haven Municipal Marina has slips on both sides of the river and we were put on the long dock on the south side.
The City of South Haven has a very nice downtown. approx. a 5 block area with lots of restaurants and various shops. The Town was pretty busy for the 2nd full weekend of September but the weather was great and that had a lot to do with it. There is a nice river walk on the south side that Candy and I used to walk back to the Lake where there is a huge beach. It seems to be common practice for some of the fishermen to troll the river between the lake and the marina.
As I write this it is raining. We had decided to stay today because there is a lot of rain on the radar and the wind is still out of the southwest. Tomorrow is predicted to be sunny and winds out of the northeast.
Hope you have a great safe trip! I look forward to sailing the Loop vicariously thru you two again!
Good to see you when I was in the office. I will keep the Blog going for the 2nd time around. Once again Lake Michigan has shown her ugly side to us but we did move today with the north wind at our stern. If you get to Florida look us up.
Larry