Northport

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

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 128 - August 6, 2017

On leaving Irish Boat Shop, we headed over to Walstrom Marina east of Irish for fuel. Only Walstrom's fuel dock is not at their marina! Instead, it is on a floating dock off the end of a private dock west of Irish! After that confusion was sorted out, we made our way over to the fuel dock  A boat was fueling when we arrived, and the fuel dock attendant said he would call us in when that boat was done fueling. While we were waiting this absolutely immense yacht arrived and backed into the private dock just behind the fuel dock. I am in the photo for scale!

Seaquest, a 163 foot $40 million yacht

This fine example of conspicuous consumption belongs to Dick and Betsy DeVos. Dick is the son of Amway founder Rich DeVos, and Betsy is the immensely unqualified Secretary of Education, if anybody did not know that. The boat is docked in Harbor Springs in the summer and in the Cayman Islands in the winter. The dock attendant said Betsy had been there a few days ago. Seaquest has accommodations for twelve guests and a crew of twelve. According to the fuel dock attendant, she (Seaquest, not Betsy!) holds 20,000 gallons of fuel. I guess if you can pay $40 million for the boat, a $60,000 or $80,000 fuel bill is no big deal!

Our destination today was Northport on the Grand Traverse Bay, about 40 miles away from Irish Boat Shop. The winds were in the single digits, and Lake Michigan was reasonably manageable today, and the few miles into Grand Traverse Bay were dead flat. Here is our track from Irish Boat Shop to Northport!

Screenshot of Harbor Springs to Northport track

There are actually two anchorages shown in Active Captain for Northport, and we went to the anchorage a little bit south of the Northport Marina instead of the one to the north we had originally picked. The one south of the marina is opposite a nice park and sandy swimming beach with a good spot to land the kayak! There is a nice grocery store just two blocks above the marina, and I went there first for a couple of items, then returned for Baxter duty! He was certainly puzzled to see me paddle off without him when I went to the store! Baxter ran around making friends with everyone on the beach! 

Katy on Pili Lani  got this great shop of Daydream at anchor at Northport! 

Daydream anchored at Northport.
Photo by Katy on PIli Lani, thanks Katy!

Here is a screenshot of our waypoints from Northport to Chicago, all subject to change of course. Our destination tomorrow is Sleeping Bear Bay, and SailFlow and Marine Weather tell us conditions will be a bit more challenging tomorrow than they were today! We will apparently see winds of ten to fifteen knots from the north and waves to two feet, but once we get out of Grand Traverse Bay, we should be surfing following seas as we head south. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

Screenshot of waypoints from
 Northport to Chicago