14 Aug 17

The alarm woke us up at 07:00 and we reluctantly got up and got going, as the weather was fine, although a bit cool (what else is new). We pulled away from the dock at 09:00 and motored out into flat calm conditions and almost immediately under the Mackinac Bridge (very cool, for a civil engineer) and into Lake Michigan; another major milestone on our American Great Loop. The wind was very light all day, so we motored essentially west all the way to Beaver Island, where we tied up at the Beaver Island Municipal Marina in Saint James Bay just after 14:00. We walked into town, did a bit of shopping and checked out the site of the murder/assasination of “King” Strang, self-proclaimed leader of a break-away branch of the Mormons, who had taken over the island in the mid-1850s. The whole lot was run out of Beaver Island shortly afterward. This is a quiet little harbor (where “the middle of nowhere is somewhere”, which seems to be the island’s motto); the most exiting event of the day is the twice-daily arrival of the ferry from Charlevoix. The other marina is for sale, though; anybody want to go halves with me?

45-44.824’N, 085-31.056’W; Log = 37.8, Sum (2017) = 1709.7 N-m