Half of the Misty Pearl crew—half of the human crew anyway—thinks the best thing about today is that there’s just one more day before the real start of college football. (The other half prefers watching the Cardinals. The boys prefer sleeping.) To celebrate, we took off at dawn for the 6-hour cruise down to Benton Harbor.
Speaking of Benton Harbor, all marina owners should take note of the St. Joseph West Basin Marina website and the websites of a few other marinas that do things right. Would it kill you to include a map with slip numbers?
Far too often we radio in, the teenagers who are manning (or womanning) the dock give us an assignment (assuming they respond at all), and then we have to rely on ambiguous or backwards or pure-on wrong directions, causing much unnecessary angst: “Go to the fuel dock (which never is well-marked), turn east (which we then have to figure out on the fly and which actually may be west), past the small yellow flag (which always is smaller than small and mixed in with a bajillion small colored flags flapping from every boat in the marina), and go in next to the blue sailboat (which of the dozen sailboats with blue hulls is the right one, Meathead?)” Today we pulled up the map and had it handy well before they gave us the spot into which we easily slid. Nice.
Not too much time today in St. Joseph, but we did walk over to the concert in the park, which was better than most.
We topped it off with some Mexican food and a mile walk—in the dark through the scary abandoned lots—back to the boat. The crazies from the Tri-State Regatta are rolling in tomorrow, and we’re here until at least Sunday. Plenty of time for some excitement.
GBO.