16 Aug 17

We slept in a bit, but awoke to a gorgeous morning. After breakfast, we walked back up into town for a cup of coffee and a look round. We finally got back to the boat about noon and shortly pulled out of Petoskey Marina. The wind was E7, so as soon as we were out of the marina, we killed the engine, got the sails up and had a nice sail all the way to the entrance to Charlevoix. We had to wait a few minutes for the US 31 bascule bridge to open, but were through at 15:30 and tied up to the Charlevoix Municipal Marina at 15:40. Charlevoix is a cool little town, right on Round Lake, which is just a quarter mile off Lake Michigan. We went for a walk around town and found our way to Oleson’s Market, which is an excellent grocery store; probably the best since we left Kingston, NY. The weather is beautiful this evening, but forecast to turn ugly tomorrow. For dinner, we went up into town to the Bridge Street Tap Room, where we had a nice meal.  

45-19.024’N, 085-15.436’W; Log = 13.7, Sum (2017) = 1756.6 N-m

17 Aug 17

The wind blew from the SE and pushed us off the dock to the tune of a very gripey bow line all night long. It rained quite a bit during the night, but was only intermittent when we got up. The Admiral went up the weekly farmer’s market and procured some very nice fresh veggies. In the meantime, I changed the on-engine fuel filter on the Volvo and spent a couple of hours tidying up the chart table and storing away spare parts. After lunch, between showers, we borrowed a couple of bikes and rode around town to look at the “mushroom” houses, a whole series of houses designed by local architect Earl Young between 1920 and 1954 - very cool. A couple of them are for sale; the Admiral and I are negotiating on which one to look at. Rain was heavy in the forecast for late afternoon, so we went to the cinema and saw “Dunkirk”; a bit intense, but it gave a good indication of how the British recovered from a military disaster in the first months of WWII by rescuing 330,000 men from the surrounding German army with the help of thousands of small yachts and fishing boats. Later, we had dinner at Scovie’s Gourmet, lovely pecan-crusted walleye fillets. On the way back to the boat, a couple of acoustic guitarists were performing at Lake Charlevoix Brewhouse, so we stopped in and listened to them for a couple of hours; Pat Ryan and Sean (didn’t get his last name) were very talented and hilarious.

18 Aug 17

We had more rain during the night and the wind got up from the west at 18 kn or more, but the dock lines did not complain like last night. It rained off and on all morning, so we took advantage of the breaks between showers to give the deck a much-needed scrubbing. One of our dock neighbors, a 45 ft go-fast power boat, loaded about 15 guests (friends and relatives, as far as we could determine), including 3 small babies, and headed out at the 13:00 bridge opening; this while there were 4 foot rollers coming in the channel from Lake Michigan. We don’t know where they were headed, but they came back at the 13:30 bridge opening, because the waves outside were too high; well, duh! What were they thinking in the first place?!? John Cross Fisheries had been recommended to us as the place to buy smoked whitefish and smoked whitefish sausage, so we checked it out and bought some. Just after that, we walked out to the end of the Lake Charlevoix entry peers to see the waves for ourselves. There were 4 ft rollers coming down the entry all the way to the bridge and lots of white-caps out on Lake Michigan. As we were standing there, a 42’ Hunter made an entry to the harbor; they had a nice surf in and I got it all on video, but there was no problem. We had dinner aboard and a quiet evening.