I awoke to the noise of high winds and rain during the night, and it was howling early this morning as well. West winds of 15 to 20 knots gusting to 25 knots were registering at the Grand Traverse Light. It looked like this would be a "weather day" for sure. In looking at all of my weather sites online, it became apparent that both south of us, in Frankfort, and north of us, in Petoskey, the winds were lower, and that didn't seem to make sense. Local boaters said it had something to do with how the winds became focused on the Leland area from passing in between the north and south Manitou Islands a few miles to the west.
Win, Anne and I spent a good deal of time studying weather data and listening to the NOAA forecasts hoping for a cruising window later in the day. Around noon, a couple of large cruisers departed, followed by a sailboat or two. We thought they might turn back, but not so. Then there seemed to be just a hint of the slackening of the wind, as the flags standing at attention started to drop a bit. By 2:30 p.m. the weather reports reflected the reduction in winds and gusts, and we said our goodbyes to Win and Susan and departed south for Frankfort. They left north for home an hour or so later. As always, we enjoyed being together, and cruising together just makes it even more special.
With the waters settling down, we passed Pyramid Point and then rounded Sleeping Bear Point, seeing the first evidence of the massive sand dunes.
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| Hundreds of mature pine trees dwarfed by the underlying massive dunes |
The sun was out, and we took this opportunity to stay along the shore and get close-up pictures of the same Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore sand dunes we had walked to four days ago. You can see the steep dune that Rachael and Anthony climbed down and back up, and those current hikers appear like ants on the 1000 ft. high dune. We had watched from the wooden observation deck barely visible in the top left third of the picture just left of the cluster of trees.
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| Sleeping Bear Dunes |
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| Rachael and Anthony's dune climb location, with climbers strung out on the vertical trail |
Point Betsie came up next, and here we made the turn south to Frankfort, welcomed by the breakwater and the Frankfort Light. We stayed at the Frankfort Municipal Marina, which is on a nice park just a block from downtown. After a somewhat stressful beginning, the day turned out fine, and we capped it off dining on a shrimp and homemade pesto pasta dinner that Anne prepared. It was especially tasty and really hit the spot.
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| Pt. Betsie Lighthouse |
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| Frankfort Lighthouse |
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