The Yooper Yacht Goes to a Wedding (Aug 2022)

[Lori] In 1992, in our tight little Baker Road enclave, neighbor Laurel Wiinikka-Buesser was born in April, neighbor Henry Seeger was born in June, and our Kent was born in August. These three kids grew up together and remain friends. When we heard last year that Henry was getting married, and that he and Jamila had chosen to do so in a destination wedding in Northport, MI literally at the town marina, we immediately said "we're takin' our boat there." Kent and Hannah agreed that that was the only way to do it, and so the plans got made for Kent, Hannah, Davi and Lauren to join us in Escanaba to start the voyage.

Neighbors Forever. Kent - Henry - Laurel

Before Perseverance came barging into our lives, never in my wildest dreams did I ever picture myself taking my private yacht to a destination wedding but we quickly decided this would be one of our big 2022 trips. Northport is located near the mouth of Grand Traverse Bay, some 20 miles north of Traverse City. It's 250 miles from Dexter and we could have driven there in 4.5 hours but why would you do that when you can cruise 81 miles across Lake Michigan from Escanaba in a mere 11 hours?

Advance reservations are rarely needed for the marinas in the northern reaches of Green Bay but it's quite another story in the popular and fashionable ports on the east side of Lake Michigan. I got on the Michigan DNR website exactly 6 months before the wedding in order to make a reservation and found exactly one slip in Northport that could accommodate the Perseverance. It was actually a 'half-slip' and required some trickier docking techniques than we usually needed for our preferred, but unavailable wall docking. I was pretty apprehensive about making our first crossing of the open lake. Having taken the car ferry 'Badger' in the past I have memories of being out of sight of land for a couple hours and the Badger moves a lot faster than the Perseverance.

To give us the best chance for a smooth crossing we decided to split the trip (our longest ever) into two legs. We would make the easy 2.5 hour hop from Esky to Jackson Harbor on Washington Island (Northernmost point of Wisconsin's Door County). From there we could time our departure for the best weather window. At this point, you might want to review last year's post titled "Less Than Ideal" to understand why even this 'safe' option had me a little nervous. Our first visit to Washington Island had been somewhat fraught, with a crew injury (Davi rather than Jim that time) and running our boat slightly aground.

We drove up to Escanaba on Sunday. At the bridge we learned that we could use our brand new MacPass at any lane including the one labeled 'cash only'. I had been feeling a little miffed that there had not been any 'MacPass Only' lanes on our first two crossings so it's good to know we can just pick the shortest line.

Kent and Hannah flew from NYC into the Escanaba airport Monday afternoon. I just sat on the aft deck and watched the sky until I saw the plane descending over Little Bay de Noc and then hopped in the car. They were just coming out the front door of the terminal when I got there. Kent sent me a nice photo of the marina he took on their final approach where you can just see the boat, and if he had a better lens, could see me on it. By the time we got to the marina Davi and Lauren had arrived and were extricating their fancy ebikes from Davi's Cobalt. Davi's catch-phrase has always been 'this will fit' and it certainly applied to that packing job. In short order, we got everyone's stuff moved onto the boat. Jim and Lori in the aft stateroom, Kent and Hannah in the guest stateroom and Davi and Lauren in the forward bunks because they were the last to confirm their reservations. It was a full boat but at least Davi decided Ümlaut could stay in Hancock with a cat sitter. Ümlaut takes up a lot of space on a boat. We love Ümlaut but I think everyone is happier this way.

[Jim] In alignment with long-standing tradition, I waited until Kent and Hannah were literally walking to the boat after being picked up from the Escanaba airport to time my injury. My hand slipped as I was installing a replacement 46 tooth chainring onto Lori's new electric bike that my parents got for the boat. The sharp chainring teeth sliced neatly into my right index finger leaving two deep parallel lacerations that bled profusely over my new chainring nut wrench. I left the blood to dry on the wrench as a warning to future me, but glued my finger back together and cleaned up the rest of the mess. The bike worked fine.

[Lori] We set out for Jackson Harbor right after lunch, aiming to get there for dinner at the one restaurant on that end of the island. It was a smooth trip. I saw the Rock Island ferry [Jim note: The Karfi, this is her Green Bay nemesis, much like the Juno is her Scandanavian inland nemesis - see "2019 Sprague Family Vacation to Sweden"], which spooked me last year, and this time was able to strategically time my entry to follow her into the harbor thus avoiding the possibility of meeting in a narrow spot. Helpful boaters got us tied off in short order and pretty quickly we were informed that the only restaurant might close early due to selling out of food. Since it was Jim's birthday and he kind of wanted to eat out we hurried right over. Too late. The sign on the door said 'Sorry, no dinner tonight.' However, there was still a crew inside and I was determined to have some of their delicious whitefish spread even if I couldn't get dinner. Unfortunately that too was sold out but they offered to sell me a whole smoked whitefish for $13. Good enough. I know how to make whitefish dip and I had most of the ingredients so it wasn't a total loss. Kent and Hannah made us a nice salmon dinner too.

The first night treated us to a pretty impressive wind and lightning storm. We were battened down and Perseverance barely noticed it but the sailors across the dock spent most of the night fussing with their fenders and shining lights up their masts. We all slept in the next day and then set off for a bicycle tour of Washington Island. Davi and Lauren had their fancy fat tire ebikes. Kent and Hannah took the folding ebikes donated by the Connecticut Spragues, and us old folks ended up on the tandem powered solely by our own muscles. Jim noted that there is some pretty significant terrain on the Island. Fortunately we chose not to climb the largest hill but we were riding into the teeth of some strong headwinds for much of trip. The kids were nice and didn't leave us in the dust till the last leg.

Thursday would have been a great day to cross the lake but we couldn't manage to reserve a slip on the other side so we stayed another day in Jackson Harbor which gave the kids a chance to take the dinghy over to Rock Island and explore a little bit. Everyone seemed to have a good time and no one got hurt so that's a win.

All hands hit the deck before 6:00am and we were underway by 6:30, just as the sun rose over the lake. None of us are particularly early risers but it's worth the effort when cruising. You make the most of your daylight and you often get the calmest seas in the morning. It's much easier than traveling by car. You can have your coffee and breakfast at the helm and once your course is set you can leave one of the crew on duty and go take a nap.

Safely Docked in Northport - 6 people, 4 e-bikes + our trusty old Tandem bike (but no Cats)

The crossing took us a little over 8 hours and was uneventful. Surprisingly, we were never out of sight of land. The lake is a bit narrower that far north and you have all the islands off of Door County in the west and the Manitou and Fox Islands near the eastern shore.

The wedding went great. It was hot as blazes. Jamila was a beautiful bride. Davi blew the airhorn at the kiss. We saw lots of friends and neighbors and hosted quite a few of them at an impromptu get-together on the boat between the ceremony and the reception. It was really fun.

Sunday was rainy so we had a leisurely lunch with other Baker Road neighbors John & Francie who had trailered their adorable sailboat "Reepicheep" to Northport. John and Francie made us burgers for dinner and we played Mahjong until we fell asleep. Monday morning was extremely rainy but Kent and Hannah had to go to the airport so we plowed through the floods in Francie's car. John and Francie and I hit a couple of wineries in the afternoon and then went back to the Perseverance for more Mahjong. I decided to order a Mahjong set for the boat since Davi insisted on taking the Hancock set back up north.

We had to vacate on Tuesday. The forecast was for 1-2 foot waves and it was dead calm when we pulled out of Northport at 6:30am. By the time we reached the mouth of Grand Traverse Bay I was beginning to notice some chop. It really became quite significant as we rounded the point into 3-4 foot seas, remnants of the weekend storms. Nothing the Perseverance couldn't handle easily, but we still got a bit of a pounding. No one got sick but some of us were looking a little peaked. Fortunately things smoothed out once we passed the islands and the rest of the trip was pleasant. Everyone took a turn at the helm--Lauren for the first time (she did great and appropriately deviated from the charted course in order to avoid running into Poverty Island)--and we were back in Escanaba in 11 short hours.

We learned a lot, got to hang out with friends, saw some great folks get married. Would definitely do it again! ...Except for that part at the end of the voyage where my deckhand tried to get too cute and warp us in to the wall using an aft line lassoed over a piling while I still had some backwards momentum. I'm sure it would have worked just fine for a smaller boat, but 35 tons times 1 mph sternway speed times a bunch of cosines of the dock line angle relative to the wall resulted in a really loud "CRAAAAACK" as the Perseverance claimed yet another 6X6 piling. Jim sheepishly 'fessed up to the harbor master, who told Jim it was good that he owned up to it, because the busted piling had a nice compression witness mark full of paint in Perseverance Blue.

[Jim addendum] Sunny-dispositioned and overly optimistic Lori glossed over the big disaster of the trip. While I was being a work drone jacked into the new satellite interwebs portal newly installed by Kent and Davi, the Kivels took Lori out for some winery visiting. Francie bought Lori a nice bottle of Pinot Noir from the Black Star winery in Sutton's bay which somebody squirreled away in the galley. Nobody noticed that it wasn't secured, and once we started getting moderately thrashed by the swells exiting Grand Traverse bay, we got a big pitch motion that dashed the bottle to tiny green shards on the tiled galley floor. Lauren got right to it with rags, but most of the 750ml contents sloshed under our slowly failing 30 year old full size Kenmore, found the 4 holes that Roy Ness had drilled through the floor in order to bolt down the fridge, and dripped down onto our smokin' hot diesel thumping away in the engine room.

The review for that particular medium bodied dry red praised it for being "dynamic, with many nuances," and "elegantly transitioning to a puckering, medium-length finish featuring a squeeze of cranberry." I really wish the reviewer could have been with us to attempt to describe the scent once you add some notes of lightly toasted hydrocarbons to the mix (I think I stole that phrase from my brother). On the plus side, if the appliance store in Esky ever gets us our new fridge, I'll have no problem finding the bolts hiding above the sound insulation in the engine room, cause they're all nicely marked with wine stains now. Also, the diesel didn't seem to mind the alcoholic bath, and our bilge smells a bit better now.