It is now 7:30 pm and we are still sitting in the marina. We awoke about 8 AM to pouring rain and it was steady all day long until just before dinner. Gray, damp and miserable.

It was sort of a slow morning, hard to get going in this kind of weather. We waited a couple of hours hoping it would clear up but no such luck. When we first arrived yesterday, Phil was chatting with Dave off “Campground” and he was giving us all the details about some of the places to visit in Michigan. Just before noon today, Dave knocked on the boat and said he had rented a car from the marina and he and Nancy were going “to town” for lunch. Were we interested? We were outta here in 5 minutes flat.

The marina car was an old Mercedes, at least 15 years old. It snorted and rumbled and balked at being requested to move forward. Or backward. When Dave finally got it going, we drove to the Four Corners to the same restaurant, Northwoods, that we were in last night for coffee, and had a lovely lunch. There is a small grocery store next to it, so topped up a few things while we had a car to carry them. And a general store next to the grocery store. I swear they had some stock in there that had been there for 30 years or more! Fun to go through.

Found it interesting outside the store. There is a machine that looks like a soft drink machine, put your loonie in and get your bottle. But this is the reverse. Put in your old plastic drink bottles and cans, one at a time into the hole, it counts them up, and gives you a receipt which you take into the store and get a rebate for your recyclables. Excellent idea. Must be popular as there were several people in line with garbage bags full of bottles.

Storm Stayed in Drummond Island

Still raining when we returned to the boat and we were invited on board "Campground" to see their 41 ft Tiara. A very nice boat, perfect for two people. We really like the high bow, the breadth and the low profile. Perfect for inland coastal waters.

This morning before we went out for lunch, I had the computer out and was determined to learn about WIFI, which is new to us. So I popped in the adapter, and all of a sudden, I am on the internet. Apparently the marina has it but they didn’t tell us.

While at lunch Dave said they had gotten WIFI and couldn’t get it to work. So we said that we had it working this morning so while we were on their boat, Dave and Phil are trying to get Dave’s to work. No such luck. Tried all kinds of things. Finally, Phil got our PC off the boat to take it over, thinking that if he did the process step-by-step, they might figure out what they were doing wrong.

Phil set up the PC and he can’t get ours to work! How embarrassing. Meanwhile, Dave is playing around with his and he manages to get on. So Dave is now happy and Phil is now frustrated but can’t use bad words because of the company! Dave checks his 97! mail messages while Phil fumes. As soon as Dave signs off, Phil gets on. And the lights went on. We figure the marina has only so many ports for users and with everybody stuck in port, they were probably all full. Anyhow, it passed another hour on a dreary day and we were able to check out the weather. How many ways can you say “rain, scattered showers, afternoon thunderstorms, sometimes severe and with hail”. Lots of red cells today but so far only constant rain.

When folks aren’t out in their rain gear discussing the lousy weather, they are out watching the boats come in to the “Yacht Haven.” Now, we have decided that this is a rather pretentious name for this place. Yes, you can get a large yacht or two on the outside wall where there is no protection - there is one there now, Maxiumus II, a large white boat whom we saw in Little Current several weeks ago. The docks appear to be a haven for smaller boats like us, nice high docks, well built, somewhat sheltered but not sure it would be totally sheltered from high winds. Aside from that, there is one bathroom for ladies and one for men. Yup, one each. There is also one shower for each. And they are in a different building from the toilet facilities. Sort of an afterthought. I guess you just fill your own holding tank and then pay to get it emptied. Since a pumpout only costs about $5 US, one can’t really complain. There is a very nice laundry facility with about 4 washers and dryers each which we were told by others dried in very short order.

The docks are at the end of a long shed covering boat slips. There are slips on both sides of the shed, a long storage roadway in between the sheds, also covered where you can store your trailer, or your car or whatever. Behind every slip is a door to the central storage area. You get from the docks to the shore by walking along the concrete path alongside the storage/roadway through the inside of the sheds. When we returned from our tour last night, we discovered there are no lights in these sheds. This is not very helpful but it does keep down the number of bugs in the sheds. You can walk down the east or the west side. The east side walkway opens out to the actual finger dock so you can keep on going right to your boat. The west walkway opens to the side of a finger dock with about 3 feet of dock before you walk into the water and no safety rail. Wonder how many fall in after a night in town?

The docks themselves have lights. They are part of a lighthouse shaped electrical/water utility fixture every second slip. The streetlights are amber and come on at dusk or when it’s dark, like today. There are electrical plugins for 15, 30 and 50 amps. Water faucets for drinking water hoses. And the best of all are the large hooks on each side of these ‘lighthouses’ which hold your water/electrical hoses so you don’t have to worry about them falling into the water or where did we put those bungee cords, etc.

All in all, very friendly staff but the amenities leave a great deal to be desired. Some people say they come here because the island is so different and they like to spend a couple of days here. Some people just use it as a stopover/customs clearing spot coming to/from Canada and then proceeding back into either Lake Huron or Lake Michigan. I would certainly clear customs here again but I would then head out to Harbor Island and use the well-protected anchorage. Live and learn.

Harbor Island Anchorage seen from Drummond Island Yacht Haven

This afternoon after returning to the boat, we plotted tracks from Drummond Island back east to Meldrum Bay and Gore Bay on Manitoulin. There is supposed to be a fairly good morning tomorrow so we also plotted our path west to St. Ignace (say IG-ness). If we can get a 2 hour window of calm seas in the morning, we will head down the De Tour Passage, past the De Tour lighthouse, and straight west to St. Ignace. There is a new municipal marina there which is state of the art and everyone has recommended it to use as a base and then to take the ferry to Mackinac Island. If we do this, then we can do Fort Drummond Marina on the return trip.

If the weather closes in again and there are more threats of severe storms, we may decide to use the track back to Manitoulin instead and skip Michigan altogether. You can only sit in marinas waiting for weather for so long, and the weather map today did not look good for the long term. The heat wave is playing havoc with the weather patterns and there were several tornado watches for the area in the last couple of days. Makes folks a little more cautious than normal, less willing “to chance it.”

Phil is outside now washing the spiders off the boat. No spider control here either and there are some doozies looking to infiltrate those hidden corners on board! Good thing they don’t check for them at customs!

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