Day 160 - Hunkered Down in St. Ignace

When we woke up it was cloudy, windy and cool.  Captain Randy checked the weather and wave reports and they confirmed that we would stay in St. Ignace for at least 1, probably 2 more nights.  It began raining around 10:00 am.

A good part of the day was spent on uploading and choosing pictures for the blog, editing, then posting entries for the last several days.  It was slow working in the BlogSpot/blogger application due to the intermittent internet connection in the marina.  Yes, we were back in US marinas that lag behind their Canadian counterparts when it comes to wireless service.

At 1:00 pm, the rain had stopped and we walked up to the marina office to check in as we had arrived too late the night before to do so.  Marina staff suggested we go to the Fort de Baude Museum if we were looking for something to do (we were).  However, by the time we took our welcome packet back to the boat, it started raining and blowing again, worse than ever.  We decided to stay on board.  I did some cleaning in the cabin and the Captain monitored the wave heights on Lake Michigan – not a pretty sight.  The waves at the North Lake Michigan Buoy were 4.5 feet and climbing (they would ultimately reach 9 feet) and at the South Lake Michigan Buoy they were 7 feet (and also would reach 9 feet).  NOAA’s forecast for gale force winds and large waves was correct.

 

After being back on the boat for a while, we noticed that the wind, which was from the East, was hitting us on our stern and causing our Sun Shade to billow up in the wind like a sail. The Captain went out, climbed on the hardtop and wrapped a line around and around the Sun Shade to hold it down.

 

After “battening” down the boat, the Captain made our dinner:  frozen mussels cooked in a boiling pouch on the stove and shrimp “grilled” on the griddler.  The mussels were especially tasty and we dipped bread in the sauce.

After dinner, the wind shifted and started blowing out of the North.  It was now hitting us on our starboard side and blowing us into the dock.  The Captain went out again and put almost every fender we had on the port side of the boat to keep us from hitting the dock.  Although we heard the fenders “squeaking” all night as they rubbed against the dock, they keep the boat from hitting the dock in the gale force winds.