This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)
cruising adventures on the Great Loop!
DAY 133 - August 11, 2017
The weather forecast for wind and waves today was okay, and the wind had now shifted, so we would have north winds pushing us instead of south winds on our nose. Time to go!
Leaving Pere Marquette Lake, we got a good look at Badger, the only coal-fired ferry operating on the Great Lakes and maybe in the U.S. The Badger at 410 feet is the largest cross-lake passenger service on the Great Lakes and is an authentic steamship. It makes a four-hour, 60-mile cruise that takes passengers, autos, RVs, tour buses, motorcycles, bicycles, and commercial trucks across Lake Michigan between Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Its identical sister ship, Spartan, was moored behind it, but it did not look like it had been in service for a long time.
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| The Badger |
We also passed the Ludington Light on the way out.
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| The Ludington light
The cruise from Pere Marquette Lake to White Lake was fun! We were surfing some big waves! All we had to do was keep the bow pointed in the same direction as the waves! Here is a screenshot of our track.
It was very rough going into the White Lake inlet. The channel was like boating in a washing machine. Once inside, though, it quickly smoothed out, and we cruised the four miles or so to our chosen anchorage.
What a disappointment! We thought it would be right off the municipal marina for easy shore access. Instead it was probably half a mile or more away from the municipal marina, and in a weedy area of greenish algae-laden water next to a residential plat under development. I was able to land there, but Baxter and I both needed some serious foot cleaning to get the green gunk off our legs! I need to update the Active Captain entry for this anchorage!
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Most of the harbors in the east side of Lake MI are located where rivers enter the lake. The outflow of the river runs against the wave action which is mostly west to east. Add a narrow outlet in a hard channel and the last half mile or so of the harbor exit can get quite sporting. Usually once you get out of the hard sided part of the channel it will smooth out considerably. I've been in situations on Lake MI where it is not the condition of the lake that stops me from going out, but the conditions in the channel.
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