Sept 15, 16 and 17 Mackinaw City, MI
We pulled out of our slip in the morning and traveled the short distance to the Straits State Harbor. It had a winding entrance with a ton of huge rocks lining the way in. It was designed to keep waves out. You can see the rocks by the Coast Guard Cutter. This vessel is their museum piece. Oh,, and they painted the hull while were were here.
The marina was huge and was absolutely empty. Yep, Tom and Colletta’s boat and a total of 5 others in the who marina. The dock master met us and we got hooked up right next to Greek’s Folly. We could have gone anywhere but it is always nice being close.
We got our bikes down and toured the town a little bit.
Mackinaw Bridge
While were out we heard about a annual event where 300 or so 18 wheel truckers have a gathering across the bridge for a few days. They clean and polish their rides, install more air horns and LED lights. The last night after it is dark, they participate in a mass lighted truck parade across the Mackinaw Bridge, into Mackinaw City and honk their way on a regular route around the city. The streets are lined with thousands of people for this annual event. Some waited for hours to make sure they had the best spot to see the spectacle. It was a impressive scene. Truck after truck, air horns LOUDLY blaring, colorful lights everywhere, engines racing, diesel smoke shooting out of the exhaust stacks; trucks, trucks and more trucks. I thought they would never stop coming. You either had to put your hands over your ears or stuff the paper in them to save your hearing. It was LOUD!
Frankly, we were really ready to get back to the boat. The sound level was incredible.
The next day we did some shopping for boat stuff and did more of the tourist thing. There were some work boats at the end of our dock. They had sonar gear all over the boat. It was a small team on a relatively small work boat that had a generator on board to power the sonar gear. They had been on contract for months to survey the layers underneath the bottom of a specific area of the lake that the government was planning to give to the state to become a underwater part. Apparently, this area was used as a gunnery range during WWII. So, another boat came in and was unloading a team of ex-navy seals, tanks, weights, wetsuits, regulators, safety gear, metal detectors, grids, etc. They had been on contract for the same time frame to survey the same area looking for unexploded ordnance. They didn’t find any – so that was good.
A weird thing occurred on board one day. I was doing something in the boat when all of the sudden there was a loud noise emanating from from somewhere low in the boat. The sound would suddenly happen and then go silent for a couple of minutes, then it would happen again. It sounded like it was coming from a part of the boat where I knew there was do electrical equipment. But because it was sporatic, I was having trouble locating the source. I got Pam looking and listening as well. Any unexplained sounds on a boat have to be looked into to prevent sinking, fires, etc. Well, we could not find anything. Pam said, “maybe it’s those guys on the work boat.” So I went down to the end of the dock and asked them and sure enough, she was right. These guys had a monster sonar pinger hanging down in the water pointed straight down. They would charge up the system and shoot a high energy “ping” to the bottom and record the sound reflections from the rock layers deep under the bottom itself. I instantly felt better that the sound was not coming from our boat. After I knew what it was it made sense. I did sound kind of like what you hear in a submarine movie when a destroyer is using the sonar to locate the sub. Only in our case all we had was one loud ping and then silence. In the end I was happy and just chocked it up as part of the adventure.
I forgot the mention that it got very windy and cold. I wanted to get a night shot of the Mackinaw Bridge so I rode my bike over by the Coast Guard Cutter took the pic below. Actually, it is a old Ice Breaker.
We did the tourist routine and covered the Keyhold Bar and Grill, shops, Darrow Family restaurant and on and on.
Again, we were all watching the weather. We spoke with Tom and Colletta by phone and decided that if they got back to the boat the next day, we could leave the following morning before a weather front moved in. They showed up in the rental car. Tom took it back to a airport in the morning and took a shuttle bus back to the marina. We were ready for him and started disconnecting everything in preparation to depart.
We are underway and headed to the Mackinaw Bridge and Lake Michigan. Weather is King and bad weather is coming in a couple of days so we have to move when we can. We are headed to Charlevoix.
