Stats for Sunday, September 2, 2018–It’s our anniversary!!

Origin:  Beaver Island Anchorage

Destination:  Leland Marina

Distance:  52.4 miles

Speed:  9.4 mph

Time on the Move:  5 hours and 34 minutes

 

We woke up on Sunday a little unsure of what our move was going to be.  We were ready to move on from Beaver Island, but the perfect weather window didn’t look quite so perfect anymore and we had about 22 miles of unprotected waters to travel through with waves coming out of the southwest.  Ultimately we decided to try it knowing we could turn around if it got too rough and we weren’t comfortable.  The bummer was that we would have already gone about 10 miles (over an hour!) before we were out of the protection of Beaver Island, so turning back at that point would be disappointing, but if it had to be done, it was an option.  We were also dealing with fog.  It was hard to tell exactly what the visibility was in reality because the sky kind of blended in with the water or maybe it was fog…with nothing to “look at” it was hard to tell.  Our apps said we had 1 mile visibility.

The beginning of our trip was a little eerie, just anticipating what was to come.  Also, the kids were all still sleeping which was a little eerie, though we enjoyed the quiet.  The fog didn’t turn out to be a problem, but we had the radar going just in case it surprised us.  After we cleared the protection of Beaver Island, the waves did pick up significantly.  It was right on the edge of doable, but I did not want to deal with much more.  When it got pretty bouncy, I tried to distract the kids (and myself) with a game of Uno that ended up lasting about 2 hours.  We played on the floor so that the card piles wouldn’t slide all of the tables and onto the floor (instead they just slid all over the floor).  Mike sped up a bit so we wouldn’t get tossed around by the waves quite so much, and before we knew it we were out of them.  It was not a bad ride all in all, though the wind was building by the time we got to Leland.  We got tied up in the marina at just the right time.  It was a bit windy and we were a bit exhausted from an early morning and a long trip.

Leland is dubbed “Fishtown” because it is centered around a fishing community.  The downtown shops and restaurants all occupy old fishing shanties right along the docks of the Leland River which are quite rustic looking.  Some of these huts still sell fresh and smoked fish (which Mike loved), but others sell ice cream, candy, sandwiches, and all kinds of cute Leland wear.  The marina and the village were PACKED.  I realize it was Sunday of Labor Day weekend, which is a pretty big tourist day in resort towns, but it was so busy I could barely turn around in some of the places we went.  There were lots of backpackers waiting for ferries over to the Manitou Islands, charter fishing boats unloading, and millions (okay, hundreds) of people milling around.  What a fun place!  After the kids were allowed to pick out candy at the candy store they instantly loved Leland, too.

We topped off the afternoon with wine tasting and grocery shopping before we headed back to the boat for a taco dinner.  We had a great view from the sun deck of the dunes to the south and other fishing boats and pleasure craft returning to port.  We also met some loopers that just left their home port of Elk Rapids that day for day #1 on the loop.  They were so excited to come across us, their first loopers!!  Boaters are such a great community of like-minded people who are interested to hear about your story and help you out, and loopers are just the same.  It was great to meet these guys and hear about their plans.  Also, it was nice to meet fresher loopers than us!!  That was a first!

We probably could have stayed in Leland another day, easily, but we had good weather to  head south the next day, and we were hoping to hit Sleeping Bear Dunes.  So  one night in Leland it was.  Leland goes on the list of places I would definitely return to one day!!  Thanks for following along and reading about our adventures!!