Day 3 Whitelake to Frankfort

Waking up this morning we were excited to see the wind had stopped and the sun was shining! Today we were due to depart Whitelake and head for Frankfort almost 100 miles to the north! We had a lot of miles to cover since we were already a day behind due to the poor lake conditions yesterday. We finally got our a/c pump ordered this morning from West Marine in Traverse City and are having it shipped overnite to Jacobson Marina in Frankfort. Before leaving for our next trip, we topped off our fuel tank at the municiple dock and headed for the channel hoping to have more success than yesterday. Needless to say, it was a huge relief to come out of the channel and see flat calm seas!

After covering about 50 miles at a nice pace of about 27 mph, we decided to anchor just off of the sandy shores of Ludington in about 20ft of water to have lunch and take a quick break. As we packed up after lunch, we noticed some light chop forming, and this eventually turned into 3 footers once we rounded Big Sable Point. This was not at all suprising considering rough seas seem to be the theme for this trip so far.

Both of us were feeling pretty drained by the time we reached Frankfort, but excited to see a new port. After tying up, we headed straight into town for dinner at Dinghy's (a restaurant Dana had picked ahead of time) for their "famous" bbq ribs!

They were delicious and Dana only dropped one

rib on her white shorts which is really good for her!

After dinner we changed into our bathing suites and headed to the beach. It was beautiful...the scenery, the crystal clear waters, and the water wasn't even too cold!

On our way back to the marina, we decided to walk down some side streets to admire some of Frankfort's beautiful old victorian homes. (side note from Dana: When I met Ben, before he was obsessed with boating, he was obsessed with old Victorian homes! So one of our favorite pastimes is visiting old, historic towns and just walking the

neighborhoods to take pictures of old houses. I especially like it because it gives Ben motivation to work on our old Victorian when we get back home!) We were amazed to find block after block of well kept victorians with perfectly manicured landscaping.

Our walk was followed by ice cream at Kilwins (Butter Pecan and Traverse City Cherry) and relaxing on the boat. We had some planning to do. High winds and waves in the forecast were causing us to reconsider our itinerary, especially the long trip over open seas to Beaver Island. We basically had one day to get to a port we could comfortably stay in for at least 3 days, and hopefully not upset our plans too much! We chose Charlevoix due to it's proximity to Mackinac Island and Traverse City, and also because Lake Charlevoix is a huge lake, with a few other ports to explore. We've also heard a lot of great things about the town, so we're getting excited about spending more time there. Now all we have to do is wait in Frankfort until our a/c pump arrives, and make the 4 or 5 hour journey to Charlevoix!

Miles covered today 99.5
Total time 4hr43min
Fuel used 50.0gal
Ave mpg 1.99!!