Day 21 - play Misty for me

The wind gods blessed us with glass flat seas again today reminiscent of the days on the start of our cruise. We made the 43 mile run from Frankfort to Ludington in just a few hours. We are staying at the Harbor View Marina. We stayed at this marina on the final day of our delivery cruise last October. Katie the marina manager, sort of remembered who we were.

In Frankfort we noticed there were no seagulls flying around soiling the docks as seagulls are apt to do. We asked our favorite dock hand Corey why there were no seagulls? He advised that a family of bald eagles had taken up residence in the trees across from the marina. Initially he saw the eagles catching fish. Then he saw them catch a few seagulls. Now all the seagulls sit on rooftop away from the harbor and rarely move off the roof. Eagles can reach altitudes of 10,000 feet and descend on their prey at speeds up to 100 mph.

Ludington, Michigan is on the opposite side of the ferry line served by the SS Badger out of Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The Badger is the last remaining coal burning ferry on the Great Lakes. On each trip they dump tons of toxic coal ash into Lake Michigan. They have been court ordered to convert to another form of propulsion but seem to be able to avoid spending the money. The Badger is 810 feet long and can carry 620 passengers and 180 automobiles. During the summer the Badger crosses the Lake Michigan twice per day.

We bought fuel in Ludington even though we could only take on 50 gallons. The price was the lowest we have seen on the trip at $3.87. Had we paid attention we would have waited and not filled up 200 gallons in Frankfurt at $4.09. We will not need to buy fuel until after we return to our home port of Waukegan. We have plenty of fuel to cross the lake on Friday.

The Harbor View marina is a new facility with a swimming pool and hot tub. The Jamesport brewery is only a block away. That will be our destination for dinner. Docking was challenging with only about one foot of leeway between the dock and the center pole. We threaded the needle and received compliments from the dock hands on our boat handling. Priscilla and Andy have become world class in their management of dock lines and directing the dock hands which lines to take first and what to do and not do. A bow thruster makes everything easier. Our next boat will have pod steering.

At dinner tonight we were sitting on the outdoor deck at the Jamesport brewery watching the SS Badger depart. Dale ordered his all time favorite sandwich – a Reuben. He searches the planet high and low for the best Reuben. He rated tonight’s Reuben a 7 out of 10. When it came time to pay the bill Dale put his credit card in the black folder. Monica, our stellar waitress who provided excellent service and commentary all evening picked up the credit card folder and Dale’s credit card fell out. It was a one in a million shot but his credit card fell perfectly through the tiny gap between the boards on the deck. Monica ran outside and with the help of two bus boys pulled the lattice from under the deck and retrieved Dale’s credit card. All is well and we have a story to tell. I am sure if Monica the waitress stood over the same place on the deck and dropped a credit card 1,000,000 times it would not fall through the crack.

Every time we look around we see the sailboat Misty. We saw them disappear into the mist in St. Ignace and reappear in Frankfort and now Tom and Carol MacIntosh and Misty are tied up right behind us in Ludington. I wonder if their next stop is White Lake?

Friday will be the last night of our cruise. We contacted Gene and Kathy (the admiral) Schnagl who have a boat in Milwaukee at the Mckinley Marina. We will stay at that marina and swap adventure stories with them. They wrote a book entitled Fear Knot about their experience cruising America’s Great Loop. The Loop is a 6,500 trip around the eastern US. Someday we will take Changing Latitudes on the Great Loop.

Tomorrow we will travel 35 miles to White Lake. The White Lake yacht club has a double size Olympic pool and nearby is a 1950’s era restaurant with the best prime rib dinner imaginable.

This is a photo of Misty in the slip behind us in Ludington. If you are not familiar with the blog title reference to the 1971 Clint Eastwood movie, Play Misty for Me – I provided the details after the photo.

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Play Misty for Me – 1971
1h 45m – Crime/Thriller
7/10-IMDb
83%-Rotten Tomatoes
Play Misty for Me marked Clint Eastwood’s debut as a director, and it gave him the then-unusual opportunity to play a regular contemporary guy in a thriller about sex, obsession, and stalking. Eastwood’s Dave Garver is a self-centered California jazz disc jockey struggling with the idea of committing to his on-again, off-again girlfriend Tobie (Donna Mills). One night he meets the mini-skirted Evelyn (Jessica Walters) in a bar, and he goes home with her for what he assumes is a one-night stand. Dave discovers, however, that Evelyn has repeatedly called his show requesting that he play ‘Misty’ for me, and she is not about to go gently into the night now that she has bedded him. Even though it touches on the early-’70s flashpoints of sexual liberation, studio execs expressed doubts about why anyone would want to see a movie featuring Eastwood as a deejay. Eastwood reportedly answered that he was not sure either, but he thought it was a good suspense story, and he offered his services as director for free. Play Misty for Me wound up making five times more than it cost and is a precursor to such erotic thrillers as Fatal Attraction (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992). Eastwood mentor Don Siegel appears early on as a bartender.~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Director: Clint Eastwood