Harbor Springs, MI

Friday -- today we made our way from Beaver Island to Harbor Springs, MI. The weather forecast was for 2-3ft waves out of the North with the wind 10-15kts subsiding to 10kts.

We left Beaver Island around 5:30AM for the 5 hour trip. The way that we had been in our slip -- kindof a wall slip (private -- no other boaters on the wall) -- forced us to use the "Stern off" approach to get out of the slip and on our way. We have been practicing the "Stern off" when leaving a wall for the last few years. The idea behind it is to put a spring line on the bow (a line running from the starboard bow to a mid-ship post on the dock), and then put the wheel over hard into the dock and put the boat in forward gear. This will bring the bow into the dock and force the stern off of the dock via the "prop wash" on the rudder (which is the force of the water from the prop hitting the rudder). Normally, once you have the stern off the dock at a 45 degree angle, then you can just go forward and be on your way. But today we needed to go in the opposite direction because the dock ended foward of us. So, we continued in forward gear with the bow spring line until the boat was perpendicular to the dock with the bow closer to the dock. Then we used the "back & fill" method to turn the boat around so we could drive out. Probably not that hard for the experienced "single screw - no bow thruster" boat, but we are still learning. We would not have taken the slip in the first place in our first couple years of owning the boat -- it would have been too hard to get back out. It worked perfect for us today -- looked like we knew what we were doing.

The ride over was a bit "rolly" with 2-3ft waves right on our beam pretty much the entire trip. But the good part is our boat doesn't roll too much in the waves and it was a easy nice ride. As we approached Harbor Springs, we saw another Sundowner leaving. We tried to hail them on the radio without luck. It looked to be a 30ft Sundowner and probably a boat named "Little Toot" that is kept in Sturgeon Bay. The only other Sundowner that we know of on the Great Lakes is a boat down in the Chicago area which is also a 30 footer (we have the 32ft version).

Harbor Springs is kindof an upscale town with some very large boats in the marina. We dropped anchor in from of the Yacht Club and headed into town. A large yacht named Maximus II (105 ft) came into the fuel dock and sat there getting fuel for probably 3 hours. We looked the boat up on the Internet (http://www.charterworld.com/index.html?sub=yacht-charter&charter=my-maximus-ii-1131) and found that it was a charter boat that could be chartered for $35,000.00 per week. Seeing that we thought the pizza for dinner was a bit pricy, I think the boat may be out of our league.

Also in the marina is a 100ft Burger named Go Fourth -- very unique older boat. Other than that, just a bunch of 70ft, 60ft, etc boats.

Internet update: We do have Verizon Aircard service and high speed wi-fi is available via the marina's for a fee.