AquaFennatic Great Loop Blog: Holland MI to South Haven MI

Sep 2^nd – It was a warm and sunny day with moderate winds. We are still at the Anchorage Marina in Holland MI enjoying the area. We met a few people from the marina and everyone has been so friendly and helpful. We rode our bikes into town to do some grocery shopping and plan to take our dingy in tomorrow to the farmers market. The marina is getting much busier today as the weekend boaters arrive for the long weekend which I expect will get much busier since they are calling for nice weather. After our bike ride we went to the pool to sit in the sun and have a couple of cold beers. After dinner we went for a walk into one of the local neighborhoods and we tried to get back to the marina without turning around ... we then had to use Google maps to find our way back. I’m glad we had technology with us otherwise we might still be walking!

Sep 3^rd – It was a warm and sunny day with mostly light winds. We are still enjoying our stay at the Anchorage marina, however the number of people at the marina have increased exponentially. There’s a constant flow of boats coming in and going out of the marina thus we’re getting more rocking and rolling action then we had over the last few days, however I expect it will calm down once everyone returns for the evening. We used the dingy to get to a dock close to the downtown area and then we walked into town and went to the farmers market to get some fresh veggies and fruit. On the way back we encountered a lot of confused waves from all the boat traffic which Maria wasn’t very happy about. West Marine sent me an email to say the life jacket that I ordered was on back order thus I had to call them to figure out how they’re going to get it to us since we plan to be at the Chicago store sometime next week. They seemed to be helpful and we’ll see if they are able to redirect the delivery to another West Marine farther south once they know when it becomes available. The Yacht club had a Prime Rib special tonight for $15 ... Wow was it good! Afterwards we had to go for a walk to burn off the calories!

Sep 4^th – It was another hot and sunny day with light winds. We decided to move from Holland MI to South Haven MI since the winds were light and it appears that high winds and thunderstorms will be coming in the next few days thus we may quicken our pace to Chicago. Our head (toilet) was having an issue where the sewage would back up into the toilet thus I replaced the Joker valve (others call this a duck bill valve) and believe that will correct the issue. We shall see. We met Dan from “Horizon Chaser” as well as Ron and Kat from “Katnap” and the group of us just sat on the dock having a few cold ones in the sun. After dinner we went for a sunset walk and socialized with the boaters at the dock. Depending on the weather we may run to Chicago tomorrow morning, however we need to ensure the weather will cooperate since it’s about a 78 mile run, otherwise we may go to St Joseph’s which is about a 25 mile jump south of here.