I started out the day by (you guessed it) sleeping in. Of course, the Admiral was up early and captured the photo at the right of the sunrise while taking Lucky on an early morning walk. Lucky is working on training the Admiral by standing at the top of the stairs down to the galley and shaking head, which causes the various tags on her collar to make noise. So far, her training seems to be going well... As you can tell by the clear sky overhead, we are in for another very nice day.
When we were still on Mackinac Island, I decided that it was about time for an oil change on our main engines, and I searched for the nearest NAPA Auto Parts store that I found was actually in St Ignace about 4 days down the road. I figured that even with the Fourth of July Holiday that they would have plenty of time to get 6 gallons of our motor oil and several oil filters. I called, and they could get the oil in one day and the filters within our 4 day window. So, I did not worry, but it all managed to fall apart. The store that had the oil must have sold it, and the filters never did arrive... This was our first failure with NAPA, and part of the problem was the lack of stores in the area and distance between them, which made trading of supplies very difficult and slow. Quite different from bigger cities where they can get parts from another store usually in a few hours. Today
, we checked in with the NAPA store to see if our oil and oil filters were ready to be delivered to our marina. It turned out they were not, and they did not expect to get the oil until Wednesday. Wednesday we got additional news from the NAPA store that they did not get their delivery. Drats! We did some researching, and I found an auto supply store in Thessalon, Ontario that has what we need. We should be there in 3 days so they are holding it for us. We are keeping our collective fingers crossed since we are heading into more remote areas over the next 10+ days.
Also, early this morning the Admiral got the photo at the left of a small cruise ship passing St Ignace and headed north. The ship is in the channel between St Ignace and Mackinac Island to the east. It is not in the main shipping channel that heads up to Sault St. Marie and the Soo Locks that enable passage up into Lake Superior. However, it is a pretty channel and would lead either to the Soo Locks or somewhat east to the North Channel and Georgian Bay.
We did more exploring of the town mainly along the waterfront that seemed to contain all of the stores of interest to us. As well as checking out our third different restaurant for more fish. I had the whitefish lunch special with broiled sweet potatoes. The broiled potatoes were served covered in a sauce with brown sugar as a main ingredient. No wonder they were so good! As you know by now, we seldom pass up a hardware store and St. Ignace had both an Ace and a True-Value hardware store. After Mackinac Island and Mackinaw City with seemingly endless fudge shops, we only saw two here, but fortunately one of them also served ice cream. So, I was able to feed my addiction for wild black cherry ice cream.
At the south end of the marina there are two sets of stairs down to a very rocky beach. Lucky found this too good to pass up. First, she has decided that the cool lake water is far superior to her water dish on the boat. Second, she has taken to wading out into the water and rooting around in the rounded pebbles until she finds exactly the right one. She then sticks her head slightly under water to pick up her prize, which she brings back to shore and drops it before hurrying back out for another. She thinks that this is great fun, and it is now impossible to walk past this location without her collecting 2 or 3 more gems. When she is finished, she also enjoys some vigorous shaking to dry off. Then she is ready to leave the beach and continue her walk.
Just beyond her beach is a former ferry dock where the railroad car ferry Chief Wawatam docked with a load of 16 railroad cars. The Chief was the last of the coal fired, steam powered ferries to be retired from this route in 1962. Rail traffic to the Upper Peninsula now is all routed around the west side of Lake Michigan. The ferry dock had been preserved as a park named after Chief Wawatam, and it includes this wooden statue in honor of the Chief (photo at left). The wooden boardwalk in the background goes out the length of the pier, and it is also typical of the waterfront boardwalk that goes along most of the downtown waterfront. The city did not obtain access to all of the waterfront since every now and then the walkways ends for one or two lots and then starts up again.
At the end of the pier is the Wawatam Lighthouse that used to guide the train ferries from Mackinaw City (photo at right). The car and truck ferries took a shorter, more direct route across the Straits of Mackinac. That is the Admiral and Lucky seated at the base for scale. With its fresh coat of white paint it is one of the more scenic spots on the waterfront. It is no longer operational as a navigation aid, but its exterior is brightly lighted at night.
On our second day, the Admiral organized an all "volunteer" work party for Lucky Us. Lucky did her part by keeping interested observers at bay while I served as the tool handler (aka gopher). We have struggled on both of our Loops to remove the brown moustache on the bow. It is caused by organic material in the water that sticks to the bow from both the bow wave and spray. We spend a lot of the trip in these organic rich waters, including most of the Gulf and Atlantic Intracoastal Waterways, the canal across Florida that includes Lake Okeechobee, as well as numerous rivers, especially the part from Chicago, IL to Mobile Bay in Alabama. As you can see in the photo above, the marina was not crowded, which is good since I have tried some nasty chemicals in the removal process, such as phosphoric acid and acetone.
The slip adjacent to Lucky Us was empty, which meant that we could turn the boat about 45 degrees to get the bow closer to one of the piers. The Admiral had purchased a bar with two suction cups on the ends at one of the local hardware stores, and she planned to use that to hold a kayak up against the hull. This would enable her to scrub hard as that seems to also be part of the process. We had one last sure fire hull cleaner to try before reverting to elbow grease with acetone on a towel. She painted on the cleaner with a bristle brush and about 5 minutes later we hosed it off, and the stains were completely gone without any rubbing (photo above). It's a "miracle"!!! Of course, this new cleaner is also nasty stuff with an organic acid, phosphoric acid and various other cleaners. Not surprisingly, the acids eat holes in clothing, but the bottom line is that the cleaner did the job with no effort. Now, if only I can remember where I bought it?
We had already eaten once at each of the 3 local restaurants, and so for a repeat visit we chose to have lunch at the second of the three restaurants that we had tried so far. It was a tough choice since, as I said before, all three had at least 4 different local fish on the menu. I had the whitefish special again, and the Admiral joined me. It seems that she is becoming a fan of Great Lakes fish as well.
We had dinner on the boat, and then headed to town for some ice cream for dessert. On the way back to the boat we stopped and enjoyed a concert on the main pier of the marina. It was two local musicians who performed mainly, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and John Denver classics. The photo at the right shows the happy concert goers. Well, Lucky could have cared less, except she got lots of "lovin" during the concert.
The last photo shows the covered area where they performed for a crowd of only 40 people, but the audience kept changing as people wandered in and out. The concert was a really nice way to end a productive as well as fun day.
Tomorrow we will head out to DeTour, MI, which is on the DeTour Passage, which is the main ship channel up to the Soo Locks. At 46 degrees North latitude it will also be the furthest North stop that we will make in the U.S. as we will enter Canada the day after that.
So, I will end today's post just as we started the day with anther beautiful sunset over east Moran Bay where we had watched the fireworks just 24 hours earlier.
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