O God, thy Sea is so great and my boat so small

September 9, 2022, Milwaukee Wi: We made the big move on Tuesday and ran across Lake Michigan from Ludington Mi to Manitowoc Wi. It was a bit of a slog and a long day, but it has provided us three great travel days in a row on the Wisconsin side traveling South. It was a good call overall and we are less than 100 miles to Chicago which is another one of our major milestones.

 Schedule wise we are right on target as we are planning to be back in Maine next weekend to close the house down and get our doctor/dentist appointments completed. Our plan is to be in Chicago Monday and spend three days at the Chicago Yacht Club and enjoy all that fine city has to offer. However, we have a major weather front coming through Sunday and Monday so we may be delayed in Winthrop Harbor an extra day which is our next destination. We are very excited that we are going to get to see PJ and Suzi Carroll who live close by, and we are getting off the boat and spending the night with them, which should be fun.  My brother Chuck and Brenda are also in Chicago so it should be a fun stopover.

Below is a review of our week including our crossing of Lake Michigan:

 

September 5^th, Travel Day #51, Frankfort to Ludington Michigan: Total Distance Traveled: 51 Miles, Total Time Traveled: 6.5 Hours. We had a great dinner with Dan and Cheri from Cheri Baby 2 and said farewell as we probably won’t catch back up with them as they are staying on the Michigan side of the Lake, and we are planning to head to the Wisconsin side to Manitowoc from Ludington.   We had been stuck for three days in Frankfort due to high winds and that was the second delay (4 days in Charlevoix), so it was time to get in the lee of the HUGE body of water. We had a 10-knot wind behind us and sloppy 2-foot seas on the beam, so we got pushed around, but it wasn’t terrible.   The good news was there 5 boats stretched out over 5 miles doing the same trip, so we had other boats on the rum line which is always comforting. One of the boats we went by sent me the photo I will post below and when you look you can see the waves are not that big less than 2 feet, only a few whitecaps. You can see how rough the ride was. This is a very comfortable boat to live on by she sure can’t handle a sea!

Note the waves aren't that big, but boy do we pound!

Once we got settled in, we walked around Ludington and there wasn’t much to see or do. We were looking for a loaf of bread and couldn’t even find that, so we were pleased we only had one night reserved, the highlight of Ludington is the ferry that runs to Manitowoc. The SS Badger is the last coal powered (talk about smoke!) steam ship in the USA. She docks right behind the marina and so at 6:45 we all went out to watch her arrive. The ferry runs 400 times a year and has no thrusters. When it approaches it’s dock it drops her anchor and spins around in reverse and is amazing to watch the captain dock. I did a time lapse I’ll try and post, but it was cool to watch. We ate on the boat and had an early night as tomorrow was crossing day.   

 Leaves are a changing!

 Lighthouse

 S S Badger Entering Ludington Harbor

Backing down on here anchor

Entrance to Ludington Harbor

Shore Line

Not sure what this was?

Cool Looking Place

September 6^th, Travel Day #52, Ludington MI to Manitowoc WI: Total Distance Traveled: 52 Miles, Total Time Traveled: 8 Hours. We departed at 7 AM and crossed with three other buddy boats. Her Idea took the lead and we had a good day to cross. The winds and waves were both predicted to be low, and they were. I love it when they get it right.   The only issue we had was a fog bank that burnt off by 9 AM. We always had 2-3 miles of visibility, but it was the first day I used the radar since the Hudson River. We lost sight of land within the first hour and didn’t see land for the next 4 hours. It always nice when you start making out structures on the horizon.  We also picked up an hour as Wisconsin is in the central time zone, so we had an extra hour to explore the town of Manitowoc.

Manitowoc is a city of 45,000 people that had a huge manufacturing presence and has lost most all those jobs, so downtown is about 1/3 occupied.  My dad sold Manitowoc Cranes for a living and 20 years ago it was the largest crane factory in the country. So, they were a major employee in the area however, 10 years ago they moved all the work elsewhere. So, all the jobs, and all the supporting industry just went away.  This certainly happened to many Mill towns in rural Maine.   We have seen this loss of vibrant Main Streets in so many towns on this trip, it was very common in upper state New York. We are as guilty as anyone but adding to the demise of many downtowns not only the loss of manufacturing jobs, but retail has had similar impacts to that economics. Retail moving to strip malls, Walmart, Targets the list goes on but its painful to see what happens to these once vibrant downtowns. You can see how beautiful the buildings were and now are in such disrepair it’s unfortunate. I feel lucky that Kennebunk has maintained a healthy Main Street and its wonderful what is happening in Biddeford. Off my soap box.

One very interesting thing was the Maritime Museum located in town and had a WW11 submarine USS Cobia docked on the river. A large portion of the museum was focused the work done by the both the Manitowoc Submarine company and  Electric Boat Company in Groton CT. in support of World War 11. Both Manitowoc Submarine Company (which was a factory that retooled itself) began building subs in 1941. Electric Boat was an established shipyard and is still in operation today. Both would lay the keel and 6 months later launch the hull and 6 months later commissioned the sub. MSC built 7 submarines a year 4 years from 1941 to 1944 in support of World War 11.  Like many companies in that era, most manufacturers retooled and built products that supported the war effort. Also, many of the workers were woman and young men under 18. That was a very special time in our history.

S S Badger passed us while we were both doing the crossing.

Maritime Museum

U S S Cobia 

The Cobia was the sub that was docked at the Museum (interesting they didn't exhibit a MSC boat!)

Interesting Tidd Bit

Can't get this song out of my head!

Freighter 

Once again it was great to be on this side of the lake and the weather for the next few days looked great.

Track

 

September 7^th Travel Day #53, Manitowoc WI to Port Washington: Total Distance Traveled: 52 Miles, Total Time Traveled: 7 Hours. We departed Manitowoc first thing and had a forecast of another great day, with 1-foot waves and less than 10 knots of wind, and that is exactly what we had. The sun was out, seas flat and the wind was low, so it was most pleasant day. We ran 2 miles off the Lake Shore all day. I continue to be amazed at how undeveloped the lake is. Most of the time we just see woods and sand dunes. I didn’t realize is how many sandy beaches and sand dunes were on Lake Michigan. I’ll include some pictures of this pretty landscape. Another thing that strikes me, and we have the same on the coast, as you drive these backroads you don’t get to the lakes and oceans often. Therefore, being on Her Idea we have unobstructed views of everything the shoreline offers.

We arrived midafternoon after a 7-hour cruise, cleaned up and went into Port Washington. Port Washington has a nice downtown that was only 2 blocks from the marina and unlike Manitowoc is still vibrant and flourishing. It is much more of a tourist town and so the stores are very well supported, and many were high end. Great restaurants and a few fun bars that we tried out. Overall Port Washington has a great vibe and was fun to spend a few hours in.

Port Washington had several loopers in the harbor, so we gathered for Docktails, and in the end we had 20 folks telling tales. After Docktails several of us grilled out and had dinner and once again made some new friends (I know that will shock most of you!)

Track

 

 Port Washington

Port Washington Downtown

Takes all kinds  pretty  hard to see these guys!

Sand Dunes

Lake Shore

Cool Dude

September 8^th Travel Day #54, Port Washington to Milwaukee: Total Distance Traveled: 26 Miles, Total Time Traveled: 5 Hours. Several loopers were planning to travel to Milwaukee as the weather was once again forecasted to be very good and we all wanted to make up for lost time we experienced on the Michigan side. We were the first to depart at 7:30 AM and the four other loopers left the harbor at 8 AM so they were 3 miles behind us all day. Once again it was a perfect day and we only had 26 miles to go.  Unlimited visibility, calm seas, and little wind. We arrived by 11:30 and had to get a pump out and check in at the fuel dock which is unusually as normally you get your slip assignment over the VHF radio. So, we were in our slip by noon had lunch, and walked around Brady Street area Old Milwaukee. We found a great sushi restaurant which we had read about earlier and planned to go back for dinner. This was a very robust area, safe and full of restaurants, bars, and a ton of tattoo parlors.  We found a great grocery store with excellent prices (I finally go to get my bread). Most of the shopping we do is in small towns near the marinas, and they charge accordingly, so it was nice to be in a competitive market.  After getting back to the boat and cleaning off the Spider poop for 2 hours we headed back to the Restaurant and had our first sushi in three months, what a treat.

Now Meredith asked me today (when she had two spiders in her shower!) why I haven’t talked about the spiders. They are everywhere, and we work everyday to eliminate them but it’s a losing battle. The spiders are on the docks and crawl up the lines. I spray the lines every day and somehow, they still get on. The problem is beside having 10 new spiders a day is their poop! Its almost impossible to get rid of it. It’s starts black then when you clean in it turns green and that’s what you can’t get clean. Well, it does clean off like 3 days later. It’s gross and takes an hour a day to try and fight a losing battle.

Ok enough about spider poop who’d a thunk that would be an issue

 Track 

Friday morning, I got an Uber to pick up our order from Total Wines and More. Best store ever. You order online get your Uber to pop the trunk and they load the product in the car. This was our first restock in three months and I’m not planning to have to do so until Florida in January. It wasn’t AS expensive as diesel fuel but darn close! Meredith washed and cleaned the dinghy while I was gone and did a great job. Then we did some interior cleaning and headed to downtown Milwaukee. Found a great lunch place with outdoor seating and great people watching. The Milwaukee River runs through downtown and the have a nice Riverwalk with plenty of shops, restaurants, and pubs along the way.

They serious about their cheese here

Meredith with "The Fonz"

The Riverwalk

I still can't walk by seating without checking it out, I'm ruined for life (not ours by the way!)

Cool Condos with Docks on the River

Milwaukee  Skyline 

Still cant walk by seating without going in to check it out,  not ours!!

Overlooking the Milwaukee Harbor

Milwaukee Skyline from Her Idea

Harvest Moon Last Night

We headed back to the boat and had some great fresh Whitefish on the grill. Early to bed as we have an early morning headed to Winthrop Harbor at 7 Am and meeting up with the Carroll’s, for some "off boat time", its been a while!

Fair Winds