We have really been enjoying Sturgeon Bay, and since it is a little spread out, we have been racking up the mileage in our many walks downtown on both sides of the bay. The photo at the right shows Center Pointe Marina where we have been staying in Sturgeon Bay. The photo was taken from the adjacent bridge over the upper portion of the bay where it is pretty narrow. The location is adjacent to parts of the downtown area on both sides of the bay. They have a lovely pool, but unfortunately the hot tub was closed for repairs. I guess that she must have looked so sad about the hot tub that the marina manager gave her the code to the indoor pool and hot tub that is part of a private facility on the grounds. This definitely had an uplifting effect on the Admiral.
On this same walk across the bridge we passed yet another interesting exhibit on the other (south) side. This is a fluke (or Danforth) anchor that was originally developed for WWII landing craft. It holds extremely well in mud, and rock, which makes it a popular general purpose anchor on pleasure craft of all sizes. This particular anchor originally weighed 5 tons, but the size of the flukes has been doubled (?) by welding on additional steel plate on the sides. As the anchor is pulled along the bottom, the flukes dig into the soft mud/sand. When hauling (raising the anchor back up) the anchor, a near vertical pull quickly breaks the flukes free of the bottom, although it may comes up with mud that needs to be washed off. We carry two anchors on the bow platform of Lucky Us, and a 34 pound Danforth fluke anchor is one of them. Both are attached to the anchor windlass and ready to quickly deploy.
This same exhibit also includes one blade of a modern propeller from a big lake freighter. In Sheboygan. On Day 72 I showed a photo of the one piece, 4 blade, 13' 8" diameter, 5 ton propeller from the ferry Badger. This is one replaceable blade from a 5 blade propeller on the lake freighter Hon. James L. Oberstar, which is 806 feet long or almost twice as long as the badger. The blades are bolted onto a single shaft, which in this case result in a final 19' diameter, and the blades can be individually replaced. Plus, a single spare blade can be stored and probably be trucked to any location. To replace a blade the ballast in the bow of the ship is filled to raise the stern partially out of the water, and the blades can be replaced by a shore based mobile crane. All of this can be done without the need to put the freighter in a dry-dock.
Almost across the end of the bridge from the previous exhibits is another one honoring the work of the US Coast Guard. In this case they have a restored 41 foot UTB or Utility Boat Large on land (photo at left). The 41 footers were the main utility boat for the Coast Guard for many years, but they have been replaced by a much more modern 45 footer. From 1973 to 78 some 207 of these were put into service, and this one was the last one decommissioned (in 2014). She was not designed to turn over and recover, but she could handle some really severe weather.
The next photo at right shows a view of the same 41 footer from astern. You can see a reel with a tow line and a large towing "eye". With the explosion of the number of pleasure craft in the past 40 years the Coast Guard can no longer routinely tow vessels, which is left to private operators, such as Tow Boat US. The Coast Guard can then concentrate on search and rescue in addition to its other missions, such as homeland security.
We also rented a car for 48 hours from Avis. Usually Enterprise is our best option, especially since they will pick you up, but for the first time in recent memory they were not a viable option. One day we took a driving tour around Door County to see some of the towns and harbors that we could visit. I do not know where the southern boundary of Door Count is, but the entire peninsula between Green Bay and Lake Michigan to the north of Sturgeon Bay is in the count. We essentially drove a circle tour around that part of the county, and one conclusion that we reached was that we could not see it all with the week or so that we have available. We also saw some of the countryside further inland than we wouldn't get to see without a car, such as the beautiful country church in the photo at the left.
We had adequate time to take in the beautiful scene above because the photo above was taken from the front porch of the place in the photo at the right. The ice cream was very good (not great), and it really felt great on a warm late spring day. Door County has become a great tourist destination, and as a result, they seem to have at least one ice cream shop in every town. Speaking of towns, most of the towns that we passed through were unincorporated with year round populations of 200 to 800 people. This is after all the "dairy state", and they probably have more cows than people in most of this county.
We visited about 5 towns and we had the opportunity to stop on the local waterfronts and at least drive through the main street area. I will not bore you with all of the pictures, but rather just show a few representative ones, such as the photo at the left. This photo was taken from a location alongside the marina at Fish Creek. We had an excellent lunch here with broiled Whitefish and mashed sweet potatoes for me. Plus the town is commercial but very quaint with at least 2 ice cream shops. Fish Creek immediately leapt to near the top of our "must visit" list for the next week.
One of the things that I like the most about this area is the clear water (photo at right) where you can still clearly see the rocks on the bottom in 4+ feet of water. In Texas the shore is quite muddy, and the fine sediment is easily stirred up into suspension. The finer the particle the longer that it will remain in suspension. Thus, we can seldom see more than a few inches down into the water. As you go further east along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico the beaches east of the Mississippi Delta contain very little fine sediment, and as a result the water is much clearer. The clarity of the water in the Georgian Bay area off of Lake Huron is one of my most vivid memories of family fishing trips in the summer. This was during the 1950s when Lake Erie was so polluted as well.
Inland we also saw this old gill net fishing boat on display. It is the Skipper, which two brothers named in honor of their father who had also been a commercial fisherman. The brothers had her built of steel in Sturgeon Bay in 1945, and she is 42 feet long with a 36 hp diesel engine. The cost was $12,000, which at that time would have bought two modest size houses. The brothers fished together for about 7 months a year for 40 years before retiring. They measured the gill nets by "boxes" with each box containing up to 4 nets with each about 350 feet long, and the brothers made and repaired all of their own nets. The brothers typically pulled and checked up to 8 boxes of nets per day. Tough job!
While we had the rent car we picked up a chart package for the Great Lakes, including Canada, that we had ordered from the West Marine store here. We also saw two movies. The first was "Now You See Me 2" and the second was "Central Intelligence". Both were quite good even though they lacked any of the modern trend of incredible graphics/animations and ear bursting volume. It goes to show that good humor and a good plot can still make a great movie without the need to assault your senses. Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart pulled off both comedy and action scenes quite well. I look forward to seeing them work together in future movies.
We also went to an evening concert at a band shell in the park adjacent to the marina. Unfortunately, since there were some rain sprinkles, the concert was moved about a block away to a large warehouse. They did have a large bay open, but it turns out that Lucky is not much of a fan of classic rock. In fact the photo at the right shows a huge yawn that was one of her kinder comments about the concert...
Sadly, our stay in Sturgeon Bay will come to an end in the morning when we will leave here to head across Green Bay to Menominee, Michigan. Yes, we will be in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan if only barely.
No comments:
Post a Comment