Thursday June 18th – Today we are traveling from Ludington, Michigan to Manistee, Michigan. If you have been following along, we crossed Lake Michigan from Manitowoc, WI to Pentwater, MI. Headed up to Ludington, MI and now heading up to Manistee, MI. Just making our way up to coast of Michigan along all the great little towns and harbors along the way. Ludington to Manistee is about 25 nautical miles, that will take us about 5 hours.

Before leaving Ludington, we checked on the SS Badger’s schedule. We see she is departing Ludington at 9 am, so we decided to hang out in the slip until after the Badger has departed. We don’t want to share a narrow outlet with the Badger. So we departed about 9:20 am. It was a pretty uneventful passage today with a mixture of sailing and motoring.

See that bump just north of Ludington that we need to go around? That’s Big Sable Point and Big Sable Point has a lighthouse, Big Sable Point Lighthouse. When on a passage, it’s the unique things on the landscape that stand out and help to break up what would otherwise be an uninteresting passing of time.

Here are some photos of Big Sable Point Lighthouse.

The town of Manistee sits along the Manistee river. The marina we stayed at was just to the left of the Manistee County Historical Museum on the map below. You will notice that the Manistee river leads into this lake area, however there is a bridge to enter the lake that we can’t get under and most of the lake is too shallow for us. The marina being right along the shore of the river was a different landscape than all the other ports we have been to so far. There is a river walk all along the shore that passes all the boats in the marina. The only downside of this is that our boat felt very accessible to anyone walking past, so this was one of the only times we locked up the boat when we left to explore town.

The marina was completely rebuilt by the city in 2012 so the docks are in great shape as well as the marina building with restrooms, etc. Manistee is a well preserved Victorian town with some great architecture that house small boutiques and shops.

What we particularly liked in Manistee was the North Channel Brewing Company. The beer here was fantastic and that alone is worth a stop in Manistee.

Cheers! Til next time!