Harbor Springs day two

September 5^th, 2014

Harbour Springs

Stats:  Nadda.  Hunkered down in Harbour Springs

Have you ever slept inside a martini shaker?  Well that’s pretty much what it felt like inside our boat last last night.  Luckily, we both sleep like babies, so it wasn't a problem.  It was just odd.

After getting secured on a dock, with SIX lines going in every direction, we pretty much bounced around like a bingo ball in the cage, wondering when we were going to pop out.  We watched an amazing light show from the fly bridge in the evening.  Some people call it heat lightning, or sheet lightning, but whatever it’s called it put on quite a show with constant flashes all across the southern sky punctuated by bolts of fork lightning here and there.  It was an amazing, non-stop show for several hours. 

The next day we learned that just a hundred metres or so down the shore, where it was a slightly more open, they had suffered some damage.  The news cameras were there and they reported it as a “seiche” (pronounced say-sh) which is basically a sudden surge of water forced into a confined bay causing the water to rise suddenly and then head back out into the lake, causing a sucking effect. Sort of like a mini Tsunami.  It unfortunately sucked out a bunch of local docks and boats.  No life lost or injuries, but there was lots of property damage.  Luckily we were docked just down from the damaged area but it sure does explain why we saw such wild, confusing seas in this “protected” bay as we were trying to dock yesterday.  The locals say they’ve never seen anything like this.  We're sure glad we moved the boat to a more sheltered spot.

We enjoyed a nice quiet day after our excitement yesterday. We had several looong walks.  A nice lady gave me a ride up the hill to the grocery store (they are so nice here!).  We barbequed steak onboard and then headed into town to the local bar to make our donation to the economy of Harbor Springs, Michigan.

Here's a couple of shots of the damage:

Damage from the seiche (pronounced: say-sh).   Apparently several small boats and docks got swept 
out into Harbor Springs Bay. We were safely hunkered down and well secured at the town dock.

                  Lovely downtown Harbor Springs.  Yup, that's me walking towards the camera.

      Name the album cover.  

  We could have spent the whole day snapping pics of unique, beautiful waterfront homes.