Thursday, September 7 - Rain on the Water

Thursday, September 7 - Rain on the Water

I am sitting on the bridge wearing blue jeans, socks and shoes, long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, AND jacket, and a blanket spread across my legs!  This is not my idea of cruising weather.  It’s extremely overcast and raining off and on, just to make things even better.  

All six Looper boats left Pentwater just after 7:00 this morning.  My third sunrise in 11 months of cruising!  Jeannie didn't believe us when I sent the pictures, see her response.  

When we cleared the sea wall headed out into Lake Michigan the waves were rolling, but certainly not as bad as they would have been the past few days.  Skies were pretty dark and it was hard to distinguish the horizon.  And rain with no windshield wipers certainly didn’t help matters.  But then there was a double rainbow to brighten things up!  Craig and Sherri took a picture of us “under he rainbow.”

There are still dunes on the eastern shore of the lake, but pictures taken in this weather don’t show them off very well. 

Out of the mist came this tug pulling a cargo ship at 8+mph.  I can’t imagine where they were headed, we haven’t seen any commercial ports in a long time. 

Grand Haven lighthouse and beach.  There were a couple of differences from the other harbors, though.  The lighthouse looked like a school house and there were lots of campers and motor homes right on the beach. 

Our destination was Grand Harbor Municipal Marina.  They didn’t sell gas or have pump out facilities, so we stopped at North Shore Marina on our way in.  Talking about sticker shock!!!!

And here is the marina, with a total of six Looper boats.  We were directly in front of the office which was handy at shower time.

It was past lunch time.  I made MeMa’s tuna salad with the wonderful tomatoes from the Farmer’s Market and onions.  As I got ready to put it on the table, I realized we didn’t have any mayonnaise, and you MUST have mayonnaise for this salad.  The last “extra” mayonnaise in the pantry had turned out to be Dijonnaise, and I had been too stingy to buy mayo at the expensive little market in Pentwater.  Danny was extremely disappointed.  Nothing else I suggested sounded good to him, so we headed for town one block away.

Downtown Grand Haven was picturesque, with no empty storefronts and interesting little shops.  We chose The Toasted Pickle for lunch and enjoyed our sandwiches.  As we were were leaving, a couple stopped us and asked if we were Loopers.  It was disconcerting - did we look that disheveled?  They explained that they saw the back of my shirt.  I forgot i was wearing the Fall 2016 Rendezvous shirt.  We had a great time chatting with them.  They are beginning The Loop in two weeks so had a few questions!  We invited them to the marina about 6:00 to talk with all six couples.

We needed groceries, especially mayonnaise!  Grand Haven runs shuttle vans for $.75 per trip (for seniors).  Craig and Sherri had to pay $1.50 due to their youth.  Anyhow, six of us took the shuttle to Meijer.  The last shuttle pick-up was at 5:30, so we did some speed shopping!  They had 300-pack (Jeannie here, I'm assuming she means 30-pack, I'm sure Dad wished it was a 300 pack) Milwaukee’s Best for Danny and big boxes of wine for me.  And mayonnaise!  When we called for pick-up, the guy said, “Is this the marina group?”  Love small towns.

We got back to the boat just a few minutes before Tim and Ramey arrived.  The plans were to go to a Mexican restaurant, but we begged off and sent our new friends off with the group.  We were exhausted, Danny didn’t feel well, and we didn’t think we would be very good company.  I’m sure the other five couples supplied more than enough information and encouragement!

All in all a wonderful Loop day, even with the rain and cold.