South Haven MI to St Joseph Harbor MI - Sep 7, 2016

Sep 5^th – It’s another hot and sunny day with moderate winds, however the next week looks like we will have high winds and chances of thunderstorms.  Last night we played the card game “Golf” for the first time since we left our Lake Simcoe friends.  The boaters we played with knew of a different version using 9 cards per person, however they tried our version of the game and enjoyed it since it went faster and was easy to play.  The winds and waves forecast for travel to Chicago was not good thus we traveled to St Joseph MI and tied up at a free wall with 2 other Loopers.  I noticed that our boat is leaking oil from one of the fittings on a hose on the port engine which can’t be fixed.  The replacement part is $330 US thus for now I’ve decided to wrap rescue tape on the fitting until we can get the replacement part.  We walked up to town and then went to the beach with Dan and Jacque from “Horizon Chaser” then went for a swim in 60 degree F water ... Yes that’s right ... the water temperatures have dropped drastically as a result of all the winds which have churned up the cold water from the bottom.  It was so hot out that the water felt great and after a couple of minutes I didn’t feel the cold.  We walked up the beach which was packed with people enjoying the hot weather.  Once we arrived back at the boat we had docktails including a new Looping couple we met – Jack and Judy from “Regalita”.  We put our chairs in the shade and relaxed and discussed our next move.  Maria and I are planning to stay another night since we’ve been told that we must visit a large Marine store called Wolf Marine which was not open today since it is Labor Day.  As I write this blog entry I’m listening to a live performance which is only a few hundred feet away with an orchestra and opera singers.  It’s not really my type of music, however it’s an interesting change as long as it’s brief ;) 

Sep 6^th – It’s an extremely hot and humid day with moderate winds.  We stayed in St. Joseph today and walked up to Wolf Marine and I was amazed at the size of the store as well as the variety and selection of marine parts that they had on-site.  We bought various parts as well as 2 fender balls which will be arriving tomorrow thus we will most likely stay one more day before leaving for Chicago.  Wolf Marine offers a shuttle service to and from the store, thus they drove us back to the boat after we finished our shopping.  The other 2 Loopers that were with us last night decided to move to Michigan City today and they plan to move to Chicago tomorrow.  We will most likely jump directly to Chicago from here, however the weather may impact our plans, as usual. 

Sep 7^th – It’s another Hot Hot Hot day with moderate winds.  We stayed in St. Joseph again today since it looks like Chicago is being hit by thunderstorms thus our next window to run to Chicago is either tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning based on the forecasts that I have seen.  We walked into town to have breakfast and after we returned to the boat the owner of Wolf Marine picked us up at the boat to get our fender balls that we ordered yesterday.  We decided to get a couple more things while we were at the store and then Richard (a Wolf Marine employee) drove us back to the boat ... what a nice guy!  He reminds me of Santa in both looks and jolliness... see the picture below.  Richard mentioned that there are some unsafe areas in Benton Harbor which is across the bridge from St. Joseph ... we had a strange incident today where a group of young men driving in a car yelled some rude things at us.  This is the first time we’ve encountered this type of bad behavior while boating and hopefully it’s the last.

Entrance in to St Joseph Harbor

Train bridge just behind the free wall in St Joseph Harbor

The town of St Joseph Harbor

A neat looking fountain in St Joseph

The Beach in St Joseph was busy!

Swimming with the crew of Horizon Chaser

A massive ship that docked on the other side of the canal from us

A small section from Wolf Marine

Santa ... I mean Richard - a great guy and boater from Wolf Marine