NOAA Is Our Friend

NOAA weather station at Kewaunee, WI.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has weather stations all over the USA to help citizens make informed decisions while they work and play. NOAA data informed us to stay put for a few more hours until the waves diminished along with the wind gusts above 25 mph. I thought the wind would help dry my nylon shirt that I had hung in the cockpit, but it just blew it away

Many Web and device applications use NOAA data to portray the information to special audiences. Sailors have many choices including NOAA's own site, weather.gov. 

Classic: Finding a Leak

The tried and true method for finding a leak on a fiberglass boat is to use food coloring. We finally dedicated a super market run to getting the stuff and applied two colors to possible leak locations. One of them appeared below deck, so we had our culprit. It was a nasty ding on the rub rail gotten last year and not taken care of. There's a lesson for us. 

Sunset on the Beach

There's a slogan in Michigan (perhaps elsewhere) that one should live their life one sunset at a time. That slogan surely has sunsets like the one last night on the beach in Charlevoix. If you look closely in the photo, you can see Beth and Java walking along the beach in the fading light.

Dinner with a Freind

Leland, MI is a great place even when the wind and waves are up and the temperature is 10 degrees below normal. We don't usual get to enjoy Lelamd when the weather is nice because we push off the dock then. So it was a special delight that our single-hander friend, David, sailed Windwise south from Petosky to dine with us at the Riverview Inn.

Earlier in the day we walked Java along the wooded streets and passed a campsite of cyclists at the school. The cyclists had ridden from Frankfort that morning. Just as we had sailed from there the day before. 

We made friends with boaters who had been in Frankfort with us and Java made friends with other sailor dogs, except one Schnauzer. 

When David pulled into the harbor the wind was 20 kts from the NW making it challenging to dock, but he had help from Harbormaster Russell and others and slipped in up close to the boaters lounge. Very convenient. We invited David over to Speakeasy for chess and a new drink we named Leland Stormy consisting of hot ginger tea and rum. 

That evening we dined on Whitefish and Walleye with lots of conversation about sailing and destinations. For desert, we each had a Hummer, which consisted of ice cream, Kahkua, and rum. Yum!

--
Mark Gillingham | @markgillingham | 773-797-9560 | loftnet.com | 101010scholoarship.info

Storm Clouds

Sailors love beer, but a brewery called Stormcloud will been seen with some suspicion. Clouds may have silver linings but they may also pack a wallop to a small boat on the open water. Nevertheless, we stopped at the inviting deck of the Stormcloud Brewing Company in Frankfort to sample their brews and food.

Beth tasted a bitter stout that did not suit her before ordering red wine. I went right for a black IPA that had a potent bitter hoppy flavor. Just right for me. We tried a flatbread with a wonderful doughy crust that reminded me of the wort dough served at the Bridgeport Brew Pub in Portland Oregon. The breads had inventive toppings—corn, eggs, avocado, and horseradish sauce. We ordered another. 

Java loved the pub too. She sat beneath the table waiting for crumbs to fall, which they did. 

PFD: Testing. Testing.

Each year one should test personal floatation devices (PFD) to make sure they will keep you afloat in an emergency. It's simple to test, just jump in the water. The PFD you use should be designed to keep you high in the water with your head raised. Larger adults need devices rated for more buoyancy than smaller adults and children. 

If your PDF is an inflatable design, it must be recharged following each test. If the PFD is automatic, it contains a pill that dissolves in water and allows the mechanism to discharge air into the inflatable bladder. Both the pill and air cartridge must be replaced. Manual inflatable PFDs have only the cartridge to replace. 

Beth volunteered to test her PFD in a small lake that her family has gone to for decades of summers, Stony Lake. Her brother, Bob, took her out in his boat and Beth jumped in the lake. Following are pictures of Beth wearing an inflatable PFD before and after immersion.

Harbor Towne

Developers like to create ambiance where there was something else—what is known as "nothing." In the nothing that was the dune between Lake Michigan and Lake Muskegon, developers created Harbor Towne, a marina and townhouse development. As a private marina, Harbor Towne is different, it's inexpensive. Our dock fee was $1.25/foot rather than the $2-4/foot in Saugatuck.

We walked with Java to the human beach near the pier head where Beth swam and I kept the dog off the beach per the local ordinance. Then we marched a mile south past the water treatment facility to the dog beach where Java was released to enjoy the water and fetching sticks. 

On our return, we stopped at Dockers, concept restaurant within Harbor Towne, to have a drink—beer and wine were only $3 because it was Wednesday. After. Shower in the clean and modern marina washrooms, we returned to Dockers for dinner. I had delicious mussels and Beth had Mahi-Mahi tacos. Both were delicious and served with care and efficiency by our server, Nick. 

Java was very happy with the dog run, which had a soft path of bark chips and a sand box for personal business. 

Harbor Town is in our list of great stops on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. We would have liked the city of Muskegon itself  to be a boaters paradise, but that hasn't happened yet. While the city fugues out what it wants to be, developers have figured out what boaters want.