Sept 07 blog. One more day on Lake Huron 45◦50.871'N 0.84◦ 36.600'W

We had a leisurely start to our day today. Yesterday evening Ted and Deb had talked to us about an Engineer who is making a house out of the pilot house of a laker. A Laker is a ship specifically designed to run merchandise around the great lakes. Ted tells us these ships where 380ft long with a pilot house located at the front of the ship. Because the pilot house was so close to the front of the ship, the captain could not tell where the nose of the ship was pointing so they added a 30ft pole to the front to guide them. So when one of these ships was decommissioned;this couple purchased it and had a cement pad laid, then they had the pilot house cut off and craned onto this pad. Apparently it took 6 years to get the pad at the right angle for the pilot house.  This thing is massive, 4 stories high and solid steel. How they managed to get this on the pad is beyond me, but we just had to go check it out for ourselves. The Marina we were at had schwinn bikes that we could borrow, so we grabbed a couple and went on the 2 mile trek to see this thing. The schwinns are not in great shape. Jim's bike had a front break that was constantly on. Mine had a crooked front wheel and the chain guard that was coming off, but they got us there and we took a few pictures to share with you. After checking out the pilot house, we came back to the boat, did a couple of loads of laundry, hung them on the cloth lines on the Lido deck, did our morning checks and off we went. It was 11:30am before we left. We made it all the way to Mackinaw Island in choppy 3 foot waves but all on the nose. With a SW wind we had the wind in our face most of the day. They have these massive lighted markers on the great lakes so I took a picture of that for your viewing pleasure also. We arrived at Mackinaw @ 5:30pm so we just anchored out in the main bay. Tomorrow we pass the Mackinaw bridge and this will put us in Lake Michigan. Our last great lake before we cross into the river system and slow things down a bit. Another 5-6 days to go for this leg.  We got a couple of request to enter our co-ordinates on these blogs, so we will now start adding this to the title of every blog. For those of you who really want the co-ordinates of Misery Bay (so you can mark it off as a never go there anchorage) the coordinates are as follows. 45^◦ 47.170N 082^◦44.540W. Oh and one last little note. Detour Michigan was at 45^◦ 59.722'North which makes it the further point north for this trip. From here on out we will be heading south until the butter melts.