06/24/2007

Special to the Record-Eagle
Richard and Kimiko Williams aboard Riki.

Call of the Water

Some boaters leave land behind

By
Record-Eagle staff writer

Record-Eagle/Douglas Tesner
Kate Ellison rows her dinghy to shore as her sailboat Kingship bobs gently at its mooring on West Grand Traverse Bay. Ellison recently sold her house in Interlochen to buy the boat and is living aboard it this summer, bicycling to work at Munson Medical Center and making regular trips into town for water and other provisions.

TRAVERSE CITY — Broiling under a hot sun at Clinch Marina's E dock, Bill Hubbell reclined in a deck chair, surrounded by a cooler, a boom box and a jangling cell phone.

"You have to have amenities,” said Hubbell, who was getting an early start to the weekend aboard his 24-foot Rinker.

With 3,288 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, 11,000 inland lakes and 36,000 miles of rivers and streams, Michigan is a powerful attraction for boaters. Not surprisingly, many of them hail from "Up North,” where the water bug can bite hard.

"We try to get in the water every weekend,” said Hubbell, 55, a Traverse City salesman who works four days a week and plays the other three. While he and wife Pam often trailer the boat to different launches around the region, he said they rent a "transient” slip at Clinch Marina on Grand Traverse Bay five or six weekends a year — and for longer around National Cherry Festival time.

"We've just come to enjoy this marina so much that we come here a lot,” he said. "It's the camaraderie, the facilities, meeting new people. Boaters are a unique group.”

Like others around the region, the marina is gearing up for its peak season, said Harbormaster Barry Smith. Most of the 59 seasonal boats are already in, and there's a waiting list for slips. By festival week, July 7-14, all 118 slips will be full, he said.

Michigan consistently ranks No. 1 or 2 in the U.S. for registered watercraft, according to the Michigan secretary of state office. In 2006, the state had nearly 1 million registered boats.

"Once you get the bug of being around water, you bring it into everything,” said Lauren Engel, one of about 13 dock attendants at Clinch Marina who do everything from tie up boats and pump gas to answer radio calls.

An area native, Engel, 23, just completed her first year of law school and is going into maritime law through a joint degree program at Roger Williams University School of Law and the University of Rhode Island Department of Marine Affairs. A 50-ton Great Lakes and Inland captain, she's also working as a private captain this summer.

While many boaters use area marinas as the stop-off point on an extended cruise, seasonal slip-holders tend to stick closer to home, officials say.

"We have 50 seasonal slips and most of those people may come down on the weekend for one or two nights but not really spend the summer on their boat,” said Chris Flynn, a member of the Petoskey Parks and Recreation staff who works on the dock at Petoskey Marina. The 100-slip marina on Little Traverse Bay is a favorite of boaters because of its location near Bayfront Park, which connects with the historic Gaslight District of downtown Petoskey via a pedestrian tunnel.

"If they don't have a waterfront residence, this is like their waterfront residence,” Flynn said. "They might barbecue, hang out, mingle and talk with the other boaters and go back home.”

For Hubbell and his wife, a typical weekend at Clinch Marina may include boating to Power Island or Suttons Bay for lunch or simply gathering at the dock with friends. In the evening, they'll barbecue on shore or stroll a few blocks downtown to try out a new restaurant before heading back to the boat — or home — for the night.

Transient dockage rates start at $27 a night for boats 24 feet and under, while seasonal rates range from $2,385 to $7,845, depending on boat size. Both include access to a coin laundry room, toilet and shower facilities, bicycle racks, charcoal grills and picnic tables, wireless Internet and a boater's lounge with TV weather channel and a book exchange.

"It's very comfortable to just kind of relax down here and get away from the hustle and bustle of stuff,” Hubbell said. "I'm not a golfer; this is my golf.”

Jim Bartlett has cruised the Great Lakes with his wife Nancy since before they had children — first aboard sailboats, then on powerboats. Now the couple spend almost every summer day aboard their 37-foot Tiara Open.

"It's like a cottage,” said Bartlett, general manager of Nub's Nob ski area in Harbor Springs, from the cockpit of the cruising-fishing vessel. "The view is just spectacular. It's waterfront without having to have waterfront.”

The couple are part of Walstrom Marine Basin's so-called "C dock mafia,” a group of about a dozen boaters who are dock neighbors at the Harbor Springs marina.

"These people are on their boats 24/7,” said Mike Johnson, harbormaster at the nearby Harbor Springs Municipal Marina. "They cruise together, they'll all go up to Mackinac Island for the Lilac Festival.”

That's where Bartlett was on a recent Friday, where he was taking time off work to celebrate his 55th birthday and wedding anniversary while taking in some festival events.

"It's kind of the kick-off trip for summer,” he said, of the annual excursion. "Yesterday we took the boat three miles from the island and just floated all afternoon. You catch a little sun, read a book, have a little lunch. I actually went swimming twice.”

Besides Mackinac Island and the North Channel in Lake Huron, Bartlett said some of the couple's favorite cruising destinations are Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and Beaver Island, South Fox Island and the Manitou Islands in Lake Michigan. Northern Michigan's coastline offers some of the best waters for gunkholing, or cruising in shallow waters and overnighting in small coves, he added.

Richard and Kimiko Williams have a home in Traverse City but live aboard the S/V RIKI six months of the year. The 34-foot sailing catamaran is equipped with a full galley and all the other comforts of home, including a queen-size bed, a laptop computer, a flat-screen TV and DVD player, a music system, antibiotics for medical emergencies and a bicycle for shore excursions.

"It is our 360-degree view water property, our floating condo,” said Richard Williams, 64, who grew up on Grand Traverse Bay.

Since retiring from their jobs with Saginaw Township Community Schools in 1999, the couple has spent every winter cruising on the waters around Florida, where they let whim and weather dictate their schedule. Instead of paying dockage fees, they anchor offshore, using their dinghy as their taxi.

"We don't say we're going to be at a certain place at a certain time. We'll say, 'We're coming north. We'll call you when we get there,'” Williams said. "That's what's so much fun about this: the mobility.”

Now the couple, who crew on the tall ship Madeline in the summer, are working on a vintage 1973 trawler they call their "hobby boat.” When restored, the boat will eventually take them around eastern North America on a route known as the Great Loop.

"I never dreamed this big,” Williams said. "I knew that eventually I wanted to take a boat in the Great Lakes to Florida. But I never dreamed about the Great Loop or the Bahamas.”