Marina Shores at Dune Harbor, Portage, Indiana

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 152 - August 30, 2017

We woke up this morning on Daydream still in New Buffalo Marine Service's boat yard. The plan was for the crew to get down to work to finish the rub rail installation at 8:30 a.m., but work did not actually start until after 9 a.m. Sam was there on time, Billy was late, and Ed was the last on the scene.

The work actually proceeded fairly well, as they laboriously removed each section, caulked each hole, reinserted the bolt or screw with the special thin washer under the head, put the washer and nylock nut on the bolts inside the boat, and tightened each one down. Either Ed or Sam was on the outside and Billy was on the inside. Sam then inserted the rubber insert, and the work was done about 1:00 p.m.  We settled the bill, way too much in our view. Sam works very efficiently but Ed and Billy just do not move very fast. Ed did cut a number of hours off the bill at the end, but we no way anticipated the rub rail repair would take a day and a half or cost so much. Oh well, it is done, and we are pretty confident that it was done correctly. Now it is up to us to make sure we never get into a situation like we did at St. Joseph again!

We were back in the water at about 3 p.m. at the City boat launch, and since we are headed west, it was only 2 p.m. Indiana time. We made good time to Marina Shores at Dune Harbor in Portage, arriving about 5:30 p.m., covering the 30 miles in about three and a half hours. This calculates to an average speed of 8.5 smph, as we were getting a great push from the following seas.

As we were passing Portage, we went by Burns International Harbor. This is a blight on Lake Michigan, the ugliest industrial shoreline we have ever seen! I did not take any photos, and I am reluctant to use images from Google images because of potential copyright issues. But we were soon past that, and found the entrance to the Portage Burns Waterway leading back to Marina Shores at Dune Harbor.

We stopped at the fuel dock to gas up, and it was a good thing we did! From our telephone conversations with the marina office, we did not have a clear picture of where our slip was. All they told us was "B" on the east side! The gal in the office showed us the map, and it was immediately clear. Almost all of the slips here are long term. There are only twelve transient slips, and they are on the outside end of each dock, which are marked as you come in from F down to A. There were no other boats in the transient slips except a boat on B on the west side, naturally. We also bought ice cream at the Ship's Store for dessert tonight, we figure we deserve it after the stress of the last two days at New Buffalo Marine Services boat yard!

Navionics screenshot of  our slip at Marina Shores at Dune Harbor

This is a very nice marina. There is the marina and a residential development directly above the docks, with tennis court, beautiful swimming pool, and a clubhouse with fitness room, bathrooms and a free laundry, which we took advantage of!

We need to be at Du Sable marina tomorrow, but looking at SailFlow and Marine Weather, we may get our fillings knocked out - not good. We will go during the afternoon window when the winds are the lowest, and keep our fingers crossed!

At New Buffalo Marine Services Boat Yard

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 151 - August 29, 2017

This post could have been called Day 11 in New Buffalo, but since we pulled out of the marina this morning and spent the day at the New Buffalo Marine Services boat yard, I decided that was the more appropriate post title. 

We arranged to meet Ed at the City Boat Ramp, and he said we should leave the marina when we saw his truck go over the bridge. We saw him go by, and motored the short distance to the boat ramp up the Galien River. So far, so good. His truck and IMMENSE trailer were at the boat ramp waiting for us, and we pulled up to the dock at one of the lanes.

Then things kind of started going sideways. Ed was not prepared to load a boat with a flat bottom like a C-Dory. His trailer can handle a lot of different sized boats, but it is set up with the assumption that the boat will all have a vee shaped bottom. With a lot of jockeying, blocking on the side rails of the trailer, and a dozen or so efforts to get it centered and properly supported, Daydream was finally loaded. I didn't time it, but it probably took an hour to get Daydream loaded and secured on the trailer. One interesting thing about the trailer is that the way it loads boats - the tires are deflated, the boat is floated over the trailer, and then the tires are re-inflated, raising the trailer under the boat, and the boat out of the water - all controlled from controls at the trailer tongue.

Daydream on trailer

It was a couple of miles to New Buffalo Marine Services boat yard, and Ed and his helpers Billy and Sam started removing the wounded rub rail. They thought that would be easy and quick, but it wasn't. The C-Dory manufacturing process definitely complicated the process, because the original rub rail was put on with a combination of a few screws and mostly rivets. When they pulled the rubber insert, we could see that many heads of the rivets had broken off and were just lying in the channel. To his credit, Ed had found an article on C-Brats. For my C-Brat friends, it was written by Sunbeam, and described her own rub rail replacement, and likewise criticized the way C-Dory had put the rub rails on her C-Dory 22 Cruiser. Ed had also talked again with Greg Little, production manager at C-Dory, who gave him some tips for installing the new rub rail channel.

Ed and the crew thought this job might only take a few hours. Boy, were they wrong!

The first thing the crew did after pulling the rubber insert was to drill off the remaining rivet heads and attempt to remove the few screws. The drilling of the heads went fine, but removal of the screws was painful, as many of the screws were broken or bent. My thought was that we should just leave the rivet bodies in place and caulk over the holes, and put the new rub rail up lining up the pre-drilled holes halfway between where the rivets and screws had been and drill all new holes. We had plenty of rub rail channel, three twelve foot sections, but Ed thought we needed to drive all the rivet bodies though from the outside and re-drill and re-use the existing holes after removing the rivet bodies. Ed is supposedly the expert, and I did not feel I should override his plan for the work, but if he had followed my plan, he would have been done in the early afternoon.

Following Ed's plan, which was the way Sunbeam had done it too, it basically took them most of the day to get the rivet bodies pushed through, and the holes re-drilled to accept stainless bolts on which washers and nylock nuts would be attached on the inside where that was possible, and to use stainless screws where it was not accessible from the inside. They are also using special thin washers that will separate the dissimilar metals of the stainless bolts and screws from the aluminum rub rail channel, which C-Dory had not done. 

They then cleaned the fiberglass below where the old rub rail had been and did a "mock up" fitting of the new railing. This part actually went fairly well, and they had all the pieces measured, cut and in temporarily bolted in place, but they decided to knock off at about 5 p.m., since they did not want to start caulking and permanently attaching the rub rails only to have it get dark before they could finish.

So, Patty and I are spending the night on Daydream in the boat yard. We have electric power at least, so it won't be so much different from being on the boat anywhere else. We can only hope the rest of the work will be finished early enough tomorrow for us to get launched and make it to Portage, Indiana. If not, we will have no choice but to make the crossing directly from New Buffalo to Chicago on Thursday, something we would rather not do. But after watching the work today, we are not hopeful about tomorrow.

Day Ten in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 150 - August 28, 2017

We were hoping today might be our last day in New Buffalo, but such is not to be! Had the parts arrived in the morning and the work been done in the afternoon, it might have been. However, Ed from New Buffalo Marine Services phoned in the afternoon to say that the parts had arrived, and we would be pulled out and towed to his yard tomorrow!

Not a lot of activity today! Patty did laundry and took a shower. I rode my bike to Harbor Country Marine Services in my search for the elusive Boeshield T-9.

I wanted to spray the pivot points on our new directors chairs with Boeshield T-9, as well as our folding bikes. Boeshield T-9 is a rust and corrosion preventative spray developed by the Boeing company for airplanes, and most West Coast marine supply stores carry it. Not so here. Sweetwater Marine Supply in downtown New Buffalo did not carry it and had never heard of it. Oselka Marine likewise did not know what it was. When I had gone to Harbor Country Marine yesterday, they were closed.

I am really glad that I persevered! When I went into Harbor Country Marine today and asked if they had Boeshield T-9, they likewise said they did not know what it was. But the guy said Yamaha had a product that did the same thing, and took me over to the right shelf. Guess what? The Yamaha product WAS Yamaha branded Boeshield T-9, and they had two cans of it. The gal said those two cans had been on the shelf for three years, so I naturally asked if she could give me a two-fer, and she said she would be delighted to get both cans off the shelf for the price of one! Chairs and bikes have been Boeshielded!

We also made our reservation for Wednesday night, assuming our work will be finished tomorrow, for Marina Shores at Dune Harbor in Portage, Indiana. This will leave us a very short run to Chicago, where we have reservations for Thursday, Friday and Saturday at DuSable Marine in the heart of downtown Chicago! We have a hotel reservation for Friday night, September 1st, our fiftieth wedding anniversary, at The Blacktone! Every president from Taft through Carter has stayed there, and Kennedy learned of the Cuban missile crisis while staying there! Not cheap, but we are worth it!

We also got our tickets for the Second City Comedy Club! We will need to Uber there and back, but this is something we HAVE to do while in Chicago, along with Chicago deep dish pizza!

That left us the issue of what to do with Baxter while we are at The Blackstone. We could have brought Baxter to the Blackstone for a mere $75. But we did not want to have to deal with feeding him, walking him in the concrete canyons, and dealing with whatever might happen when we were out! I will only say that Pet Care Plus will do the job, very nicely, for only slightly more than it will cost us to stay at the Blackstone, including a grooming that Baxter severely needs. Baxter has a full Washington State veterinary certificate, but Pet Care Plus requires a dog flu shot plus a negative fecal exam, despite the fact that our vet wrote them a letter that the Trifexis Baxter takes monthly should eliminate the need for the negative fecal exam. But no, Pet Care Plus was rigid on those points. The boarding, the grooming, the vet bill for the flu shot and the fecal test, plus the "pet taxi" charge to the marina and back added up very quickly. But we are worth it, we deserve a pet free anniversary! 

Ed will meet us tomorrow morning at the New Buffalo City Boat Ramp to pull us out and repair our wounded rub rails at his boatyard! We are anxious to get the heck out of here and head on to the next phase of Daydream's Great Loop!

Day Nine in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 149 - August 27, 2017

You may wonder how we fill up day after day in a marina. So do we!

Yesterday we walked up to the grocery store for a few things and that was about it! I finished a book on my Kindle, and Patty started a new book on hers. I rode my bike out to Harbor Country Marine, but it was closed. This is kind of strange, since it is a boat dealership and marine supply store. Working people, I would think, shopping for a boat probably need to be looking on a weekend. 

The marina emptied out earlier than we expected today. Most of the boats in the slips here were gone by early afternoon! A big Meridian 41 yacht pulled in with a Gold Looper flag (the burgee you can get after you have completed the Great Loop), and we chatted with the gentleman on the boat. They had done their Loop ten years ago. I am hoping we will get a chance to talk with them a bit more.

Patty also chatted with a man on a smaller boat moored next to us that also had a Gold Looper burgee, who didn't say when he finished his Loop, but he cautioned us about insurance restrictions in boat policies that disclaim coverage in certain areas for hurricane season.  We have been aware of those restrictions generally before we started, but we did not check our policy or inquire specifically, because there is no way we can avoid traveling through those areas in hurricane season and still get back to Washington for Christmas. Should we be having second thoughts, especially the way Hurricane Harvey battered Houston?

We have the Red Cross Hurricane app that will send out alerts, but we need some advice about what to do if we get an alert!  One alternative that we don't favor is to leave the boat north of the restricted area, which seems to be the Tenn-Tom to Florida, and return to finish to cross our wake during a safer time period.  I think that would mean leaving the boat somewhere around Green Turtle Bay in Kentucky, which is where we would be just before starting the Tenn-Tom Waterway to Mobile. A lot to think about here.

Tonight we had a wonderful sentimental evening in the cockpit listening to the music that has meant the most to us over our fifty years together. It's funny, but listening to the music from our lives together is one thing that always gets me misty eyed, and tonight was no exception!

Day Eight in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 148 - August 26, 2017

Today we did not do very much at all. I played around a bit trying to see how the fender board might be deployed. I am pretty sure I have it backwards from the way Dr. Bob explained, that is, the rubber pieces screwed to the 2x4 are supposed to face in toward the boat, not out toward to post or wall, to keep the fenders inside the ends of the 2x4. But when I tried that, it just did not seem to work, and this did. I have the fenders hung from the top grab rail secured with clove hitch + double half hitch knots, which seem very secure. The fenderboard is then secured to the fenders with short lengths tied with double hatf-hitch knots.  If you use a fenderboard, tell me how you do it! Frankly, I hope I never have to deploy the fenderboards for real, it is quite a PITA trying to do it from the walk-around! 

Test deployment of fenderboard 

We also rode our bikes up to town and did a little shopping, but that was about the extent of our activities. But the harbor was a zoo! There was a constant parade of all kinds of boats coming and going! There were a lot of families with kids in bow-riders who would come and tie up for a few hours and then leave, frequently two families, and we wondered where their PFDs might be, because nobody was wearing them, and bow-riders do not have a lot of storage space for seven or eight PFDs! There were also a lot of Sea Rays, Rinkers, and other fast cruisers, some coming for the night. By the evening all the slips were once again full!

We had some people stop by today to admire the C-Dory. It is clearly an uncommon vessel here. They said they loved the classic salty lines, which as all C-Dory owners know, happens every time we stop at a rest area, a gas station, or boat ramp! They were confused, as is apparently common, of the name C-Dory to Cape Dory, a sail boat. Completely different and unrelated! These folks were sailors, and said they were considering moving to a power boat due to their age and the work involved in sailing. It was very nice chatting with them!

What has surprised us most, however, is that we have been here eight days, and other than Tom and Mary on Clear Water, we have not seen any other Loopers here. Reading their blogs and also running the AGLCA Meets app, the ones I know are mostly at the northern end of Lake Michigan. One couple has bypassed ourfavorite place, Mackinac Island. They could have an easy time or a very difficult time making their way down Lake Michigan as August becomes September.  I suspect the winds will tend to increase as it gets later in the season, although that is a day by day thing. We check SailFlow twice daily, and over the last week, about five days running were not days we would have cared to venture out.  We'll be keeping tabs on them as they make their way down the lake!

Day Seven in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 147 - August 25, 2017

We have enjoyed watching the crew of Miss Jamie Lynn, the Donkersloot & Sons big dredging boat, take her out and bring her back several  times. Miss Jamie Lynn is moored on the riverbank directly opposite our slip, and when they bring her in, the pilot does a 180 degree turn in place to put it bow out toward the lake for the next day. - very impressive! The days they have gone out have corresponded pretty closely to the days we consider to be cruising days ourselves!

Donkersloot & Sons Dredging Boat Miss Jamie Lynn

This morning I took Baxter for another long paddle up the Galien River, a bit farther than we went the last time. He loves the kayak, and sits right up on the front skirt or on the tubes. No wakes and he has his doggie PFD on, so I suppose it is okay!

Baxter 's Preferred Spot in the kayak!

On our paddle, we went by the boat ramp on the Galien River, which is where Ed will pull Daydream out on his trailer to take it to his shop to replace the starboard rub rails, which we expect to happen on Monday.

Boat ramp on Galien River

We paddled past an immense marsh, the Louis J. Sima Great Lakes Marsh, which is 243 .53 protected acres. The banks of the Galien are mostly marsh like this, but not protected. We passed one house that I did not photograph that has its foundation piers in the marsh and the front porch overhanging the river!

Louis J. Sima Great Lakes Marsh

In the afternoon, Patty and I rode our bikes to the New Buffalo City Beach on Lake Michigan. This is not nearly as nice or large as the Grand Haven City Beach, and even though it was a nice sunny day, there were not very many people at the beach. The road to the beach goes over a bridge over the Galien River, which afforded a great view of Daydream in the marina.

Daydream by her lonesome in slip at marina from bridge over Galien River

By the end of the day, the marina was substantially full, and we expect it to be hopping over the weekend!

Day Six in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 146 - August 24, 2017

The final New Buffalo post will probably be called Day Ten in New Buffalo, and that is if the rub rails come in on Monday, August 28th! 

Now, no hand-wringing here! We always anticipated we would be in Chicago on our 50th wedding anniversary on September 1st. As we progressed along the Loop, we estimated that we were perhaps 10 days ahead of that. Not that we have a schedule - our only schedule imperative is to be back in Washington State for Christmas! But to the extent we thought we were ahead, we are now more or less back where we thought we would be anyway! And there are a lot worse places to hang than at the New Buffalo Municipal Marina!

Anyway, the first thing we did today was to extend here at the marina for four more days, so now we are good though next Tuesday morning, August 29th.  The second thing we did was to make our marina reservation for Chicago! I used Dockwa.com, which we had previously used in Manasquan, and we had our confirmed reservation withing a few minutes for August 31st through September 2nd, departure on September 3rd. The significance of this is that September 3rd is a Sunday, when we anticipate we will head down the Chicago River.  There is a closure weekdays at the electric carp barrier on weekdays, but it is wide open on weekends, so hitting it on a weekend seems pretty important to us!

We saw our friends Tom and Mary on Clear Water off on their way to the marina at Marquette, but before they left, somehow we mentioned we had two snaps on our camperback that we needed to fix because they got flattened on The Worst Night Ever in St. Joseph. Tom just happened to have a kit of snaps and the tool, and he replaced them in a jiffy. Make a note, always carry a snap repair kit when you are on the Great Loop and have canvas with snaps! They left us with a parting gift too, a nice bottle of prosecco  for our anniversary! We will toast them on September 1st, wherever we are.

In the afternoon, we walked to town and had...shock of all shocks...ice cream! Then we went over to the New Buffalo Farmers Market. While it does not hold a candle to the Grand Haven Farmers Market it is not totally awful either! Patty got some more fresh basil, and we also got some peaches, smoked Gouda (from Rotary, for a good cause!), and a nice eggplant. Now, many people will wonder about the eggplant! Patty fries it up and serves it with a sour cream and garlic sauce, and it is actually one of our favorites. It will be a nice change to the dinner rut we seem to have fallen into!

We are about the only boat here in the marina tonight, but that will probably change tomorrow. The weather tomorrow promises to be the best since we have been here, with the weekend, the slips will probably fill up fast. In fact, when I extended our reservation to include the weekend, the online system said there were only two slips available, so I am glad we got out in front of that one! We plan to ride our bikes a bit tomorrow, and Baxter cannot wait for another recreational paddle!

Day Five in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 145 - August 23, 2017

The rub rail repair is getting out of hand. Ed just told us that the rub rails will not be here until next Monday (today is Thursday), so we will be sitting here for at least four more days, and maybe more.

Ed orders his parts from Land 'n' Sea Distributing, and usually they get delivered for free from the Detroit warehouse. The rub rails, however, are not stocked in the Detroit warehouse. He told us one price for the shipping from wherever Land 'n' Sea stocks them, and then today he told us it would $100 more than the original quotation. Not good.  Even at that, we don't really know when we will be able to leave here because we don't know how long the work will take.

Since we are not traveling, and we are not doing much here, there is not a whole lot to write for the blog! We went back downtown for some more shopping at the grocery and hardware stores. Baxter got walked multiple times. We ate breakfast. lunch and dinner. We had another very pleasant evening with Tom and Mary on Clear Water.  Ditto yesterday, ditto tomorrow!

I will try to post some reflections over the next few day. Anybody who has suggestions for me can leave a comment, or better yet, use the Contact Form!

Day Four in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 144 - August 22, 2017

A short one today, no pictures.

You can take your choice whether today is a weather day or waiting for boat repair day, and yesterday as well and tomorrow for that matter. The winds have been outrageously high out on Lake Michigan, and the forecast does not improve until Friday. So we would not have cruised even if the rub rail repair had been completed!

I talked to Ed from New Buffalo Marine Service this morning. He has found the repair parts, and was confirming the price and shipping cost with us before ordering - we need three 12 foot sections, which cannot be shipped UPS or FedEx for some reason, so they are coming DHL (I think that is what he said). Ed was reluctant to estimate what the labor charge would likely be.  We don't really have a lot of choice, and are really appreciative that there was somebody here in New Buffalo who was willing and able to get on it! We gave him the green light to place the order.

Otherwise, we did not do a whole lot today until later in the evening, when we went over to Tom and Mary's Mainship Clear Water for some adult beverages and a rousing game of Cards Against Humanity!  We all had lots of laughs. If you know this game it is a hoot!  Patty kicked butt!!    

Day Three in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 143 - August 21, 2017

I focused my efforts this morning, as minimal as they were, on trying to keep the repair of our wounded starboard rub rail on track. Ed from New Buffalo Marine Service called to ask the Hull Identification Number in case that was significant, and I told him I would send him that, but I also thought that he really would benefit from talking with Greg Little, Production Manager at Northwest Marine Industries, the current builder of C-Dorys.  I emailed Greg and cc:'d Ed, laying our predicament out for Greg. Ed and Greg talked on the phone, and Greg told Ed he needed Ed to confirm the shape of the rub rail channel. Greg had told Ed he thought it was the one that looked like a backwards number 1. I took a picture and emailed it to Ed. Sure enough, that is exactly what it looks like! With that Greg was able to tell Ed the product number for this rub rail. Ed will now be working on obtaining three 12 foot sections of this rub rail from his suppliers. 

Rub rail channel

Having done what we could with the rub rail, it was time for the solar eclipse! Patty Googled how to make a safe eclipse viewer, and she crafted it out of a Panko box, a square of tin foil and some white paper. There is a pinhole in the tin foil on the left that projects the image onto the white paper in the bottom of the box. You look through the hole on the right to view the projected image. It worked great! The eclipse this far north was less than total, and in fact, we barely noticed that it got darker here at all. 

Patty's DIY eclipse viewer

iPhone photo of projected image of eclipse

Before dinner, I went up to the marina office and extended for three more days, since tomorrow we would otherwise have to leave. The work on the rubrails will not be done, tomorrow looks like a terrible day for cruising anyway and this is a very pleasant marina and town!

We decided we were ready for a dinner out, and Googled the local restaurants. One of them, the Brewster Cafe, featured a "Dinner for Two," where you each get a soup or salad, then split a small pizza, split a regular entree, and finally get dessert and coffee, all for a very reasonable price. It was excellent!  The dessert was a caramel apple oatmeal cookie that Patty describes as "the size of Manhattan," and the coffee was excellent too!

We finished off the night with a nightcap with Tom and Mary, who are Loopers from Massachusetts cruising in a Mainship trawler who are in the slip next to us. We had a very pleasant evening of conversation in their cockpit, and then it was time for us to trundle down the dock back to Daydream for bed!

Day Two in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 142 - August 20, 2017

We really did not expect to hear from Ed from New Buffalo Marine Services today since it is Sunday, although we hope to hear from him tomorrow. We have one more day booked, and I expect we are going to need to extend our stay, and it would be good to know for just how long!

In the morning, we went uptown shopping. Everything here is within a couple of blocks of the marina, which is really handy. We made stops at the hardware store, the pharmacy, the marine supply store and the grocery store. At the hardware store, I bought some higher quality marine grade utility cord that I use for fender whips. At the pharmacy, Patty got a med that she has been looking for. At the marine supply, I bought a fender to replace the one we lost at St. Joseph and another dock line to replace the one that frayed and snapped at St. Joseph. You would think with all the grocery shopping we have done we would be well set, but such is not the case! When we inventory what we have, we realize we are out of, or nearly out of, this or that or something else! 

By the afternoon, the marina, which had been full yesterday and this morning, had really started to empty out! 

Mostly empty slips in New Buffalo Municipal Marina on Sunday afternoon

In the afternoon, I took Baxter for a long recreational paddle up the Galien River, which is the river that flows though New Buffalo. As soon as we passed the boat ramp, there were very few homes and they were set well back from the marshy shoreline. I was looking to see if there were any potential anchorages up the river, but I did not see a place that looked suitable.

Marshy shore of Galien River with nice relection

Marsh up close!

The Galien River goes on and on, and we probably paddled a couple of miles before turning around. There were quite a few other kayakers exploring the river, and they all smiled at the way Baxter sits up front on the skirt and tubes in his life jacket! At one point, we passed a bunch of ducks, and it looked to me for a moment like Baxter was contemplating jumping to go after them. That would NOT have been a smart move on his part! I grabbed his leash and fortunately he backed down into the kayak.

The New Buffalo Municipal Marina sits right at the end of the channel into the Galien River, with the slips along the left side and end of this Google Earth screenshot. We are about halfway down the slips on the left side. 

Screenshot of Google Earth view of New Buffalo Municipal Marina

Daydream in Slip 11 at New Buffalo Municipal Marina

As you can see, there are fairways on both sides lined with condos with slips (left side) or just slips (right side).  The condos are kind of cookie cutter buildings, but the setting is hard to beat!

Condos with slips adjacent to Municipal Marina.

All in all, if we have to hang a week or so waiting for repairs, this is not a bad place to do it!

New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 141 - August 19, 2017

We woke up this morning in our peaceful little anchorage just off the St. Joseph Boat Ramp on Marina Island, well rested and refreshed after our terrible night last night. I had called New Buffalo Marine Services right after we got back from Walmart yesterday and arranged to call Ed as soon as we got to New Buffalo. Knowing that our rub rail damage was on track to get fixed did a lot to brighten our outlook!

We had our coffee and toast (cranberry walnut bread from The Baker's Wife in Grand Haven, outstanding!), and did a last check on SailFlow that today was going to be as good a cruising day as it had appeared for the last several days - confirmed! Wind under 10 miles per hour from the north or northwest, and we were going south, so still good to go! There was a little bit of rolling as our bow was not pointed in exactly the same direction as the swells, but that was really no problem.

We arrived at the New Buffalo Municipal Marina about 1 p.m.  According to Active Captain, the New Buffalo Municipal Marina is notorious for not answering boaters calling in on the VHF, but I called in on channel 9 and got an immediate response with my slip assignment, and the gal said she would be on the dock to help with the lines! Not only that, she told us she was holding some mail for us (we had arranged to have a priority mail envelope sent to the marina with our new debit cards, but it was a relief to know that they were actually here). 

I first called Ed from New Buffalo Marine Services to tell him we were here. He said he would come down to the marina, but was not very specific about the time!  Then we had our drinks and lunch, and Patty took a shower.  I didn't want to go up to town in case Ed arrived while I was gone. Three became four, became five, so we had our drinks and dinner. Ed arrived about 6:30 p.m., just when we had sort of given up on seeing him!

He spent about twenty minutes assessing the damage and taking measurements, and then we spent about half an hour on the dock listening to his stories of the Bahamas. According to Ed, he was in a bar, and was talking for quite a while to the bartender about an author named Dolores that he wanted to meet. Finally the bartender told Ed that she was sitting right next to him. The phone rang, and the bartender said "Dolores, it's for you, it's Sidney."  Ed said "That's not Sidney Poitier, is it?" and Dolores said that it was, and Ed was dubious, so Dolores handed him the phone and Ed said that after saying hello, there was no doubt that it was Sidney Poitier. That's Ed's story! He'll be checking his catalogs for rub rails and getting back to us!

The New Buffalo Municipal Marina is quite unique, as the majority of the slips are for boats 30 feet and under, and they do not allow back-in docking. There are maybe eight slips for boats 31 to 38 feet, and only six slips for boats 39 to 45 feet. It is situated right at the end of the entrance channel before a sharp turn in the river, and there is a constant parade of boats going by of all sizes and descriptions, from personal watercraft and dinghies to large yachts!  

New Buffalo Municipal Marina occupies the entire left side of the channel and the end over to the bridge.
For some reason Garmin Blue Chart Mobile does not show the slips, but they are there!

This is probably our last stop on Lake Michigan. We are unsure where we will be going when we leave here. Our options are to go directly to Chicago, which is under 50 miles but across some big waters, or perhaps to go next to Michigan City, Indiana. I have become a big fan of the Michigan DNR online marina reservation system, which we have used for Mackinac Island, Grand Haven and here, and will miss it! I also like the way Michigan has made a cut for an entrance channel from Lake Michigan to nearly every lake or river so there will be  "harbors of refuge" about every 30 miles along the shore of Lake Michigan. We also really like that just about every town has a great sandy beach on Lake Michigan, and that they are well used, at least on the weekends.

Tomorrow is a free day, so we will do a little more shopping, and I will take Baxter on a recreational paddle a way up the river to see what is there!

Day Three in St. Joseph and the Worst Night Ever

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 140 - August 18, 2017

My daily blog usually starts with breakfast and coffee. Not so this one. It starts just after midnight of August 18th. 

We had enjoyed a day, a night, a day and an evening at the Free Wall in St. Joseph. I felt we were properly fendered with the fenders on the posts. Boy, was I wrong. We had come into St. Joseph when the wind was from the south. All the next day it raged out on Lake Michigan, but from the south. Some time around midnight, the wind shifted to the west. The St. Joseph River, and hence the Free Wall, is totally exposed to west winds. And the wind speed increased to the 20s with gusts to 30 mph. Our big mistake was not being tuned into the wind direction and speed on the big lake. If we had been, we could have moved to an anchorage in a protected spot. But you usually don't think about that when you are tied up in a harbor.

About midnight, we started experiencing some really violent rocking. And it went from bad to worse. No matter how we adjusted lines and fenders, there was nothing we could do. Then the boat started slamming into the wall. Fenders were useless against the strength of the wind. Lines gave way. We lost a fender. We could not sleep of course, and so this was an all-nighter for us. We have fender boards but we had not deployed them, and even if we had, it is uncertain to me what good they would have done. It was impossible to consider moving in the darkness. In the morning, we assessed the damage. We had serious rub rail damage on the side against the wall, the starboard side, in two spots. It could have been worse. I guess this just shows the structural toughness of C-Dorys.

We also saw, to our horror, that the kayak, which had been tied alongside Daydream was missing. So, the question was, did the wind push it upstream, where we might find and recover it, or did the current take it downstream to Lake Michigan, where we would never see it again?

Forward rub rail damage

Aft rub rail damage

In the morning, we moved to a protected anchorage for today and tonight. On the way, we spotted the kayak lodged partially under a dock a good half a mile upstream and were able to recover it! Talk about relieved! We have made arrangements with a marine service facility in New Buffalo to see what can be done about the rub rail. Rub rails can be replaced or maybe repaired. As Patty says, "It is only money." 

Our day at our new anchorage was dandy! We anchored a short distance off the City of St. Joseph Boat Ramp and Fish Cleaning Station. Things looked better in the daylight. We had pretty much stopped shaking. We had not lost our boat or died! After taking a major nap, we Ubered to Walmart and did a major shopping trip, Ubered back to the boat ramp, and ferried everything, including two new Director's Chairs, to Daydream in the kayak. The rest of the day, thankfully, was uneventful!