Although we were stuck in Ludington, we held out hope for some excitement. Maybe the ferry would go down in the harbor and we could rescue everyone on our kayaks and videotape the whole thing and write a book and become rich and famous and play ourselves in the movie. Something. Anything. But nope. Nothing.
A Looper boat that will remain unnamed showed up with a very sick captain. Dinner at at PM Steamers with Second Wave, Felix (the catamaran, get it?), Corkscrew, Oar Knot, and Compass Rose on Thursday evening was about the last thing we did comfortably, although the band at the beach bonfire we checked out was solid.
The wind was a-howlin’ most all day Friday. We now know why they call Ludington The Windy City. It took all three of us to muscle the kayaks up onto the flybridge, although during a brief lull before that Shannon posed on one of them.
There were confirmed wave heights of eight feet out on the lake.
In prior posts we may have mentioned that—in round numbers—there are one zillion maritime museums along our route. Not surprisingly, there’s one in Ludington. The most shocking thing about the museum was tucked in a corner of the museum store. It was a poster proclaiming that Lake Michigan is the “Graveyard of The Great Lakes.”
Hey wait one hot second! At the Oswego Maritime Museum a very similar poster—seemingly designed to dissuade us from crossing to Canada—said that the “Graveyard of the Great Lakes” actually is Lake Ontario. Apparently every lake around here boasts of being the scariest and most dangerous. We’re calling this the Great Great Lakes Poster Scam. It’s like the producers of Caddyshack 2 claiming their product is funny. Apparently the poster company counts on people only visiting one maritime museum.
Saturday morning brought solid rain, forcing us to entertain ourselves on board. It only takes so long to replace filters and wash dishes. Sometimes on crap weather days we let our artistic talents loose. Ludington has a bunch of sculptures scattered about, so we considered some metal work.
We remembered, however, that we don’t have welding equipment or materials. Nope, our medium is photography. We call this piece “Crap Weather Through Porthole: A Study.”
If the town had an exhibit of photos almost certainly they would want to feature our submission as prominently as the abstract metal sail.
The rain stopped long enough to allow a final round of laundry before Shannon packed up.
Speaking of Shannon, she’s leaving us tomorrow to head back to college at Eckerd. Since her field of study includes marine ecology, during the rain she spent some time inside researching sponges that live in sub-aquatic pineapples. We think she’s well-prepared for an exceptional academic year.
There was a change of pace as the skies cleared and Jeff and Terri—aboard our sister Selene 43 Change of Pace—finally caught up with us. They joined us for dinner. Great folks. We hope to see them again soon.