Little Traverse Bay and Charlevoix

We left Mackinaw City on Saturday morning. It’s kind of a thrill passing under the huge Mackinac Bridge. It’s a real engineering marvel with a total length of 5 miles, the third longest suspension bridge in the world. It contains 42,000 miles of steel cable; five workers’ lives were lost during construction. I remember coming up here on a family car trip as a young girl when the bridge was brand new and it was a BIG deal – still is!



We’re now on the waters of Lake Michigan but it wasn’t a good sailing day. There was plenty of wind but it was right on our nose so we motor-sailed to Harbor Springs on Little Traverse Bay. This is the first time a marina has been full on this leg of the trip and there are more big yachts here than anywhere we’d been. We anchored in the harbor – deeper than we’d like at 32.5 feet but we held fine and had a peaceful night.

The next day was just a short 3-mile ride across the Bay to Petoskey. We got a slip right next to Looper friends Larry and Dorothy on m/v Knot Home. They live in Florida and are doing the Loop over 3 years; they’ll winter their boat in Michigan and continue next summer. We first met them in Charleston, SC and again on the Erie Canal last summer. It was fun to see them again and share Looper stories and dinner (Dorothy cooked dinner and we ate on our boat – such a deal!)

There was a really unusual sunset in Petoskey. This picture doesn’t do it justice but you can get the idea.

We changed our plan to stay in Petoskey another night due to weather forecasts so it was off to Charlevoix Monday AM. In about 3 hours we were in Charlevoix and just made it through the 1PM bridge opening. This will be a familiar sight to boaters in northeast Wisconsin who have cruised to Charlevoix.


I got this aerial view from a photo in the boater’s lounge. At the bottom is Lake Michigan, then the channel coming into Round Lake and Charlevoix. Lake Charlevoix is at the top of the photo. The water is a gorgeous color here and the weather actually felt summer-like for a change!

The marina here has undergone a major renovation and expansion. It now has 70 slips, beautiful landscaping and great facilities with free cable TV. (I almost forgot such a thing existed!) Marina staff will drop you off in their GEM (Global Electronic Motorcar). I'd never been in one - kind of fun to tool around town at 25mph. We also got our bikes out for a ride. There is an interactive fountain for the kids – this is looking out from the upper deck of the office and boater’s lounge. What a great marina!