For the last 5 years, we have traveled around the US and Western Atlantic full time on our 47' sailboat - SV Country Dancer. During all that time, we have stayed in quite a few marina's but have only a very few who's service we consider to be exceptional. Today we added a new one to that tiny list, St. Ignace Municipal Marina. Let me tell you the story. Currently we are delivering a 40 year old Columbia 43 sailboat from Waukegan to Duluth for a friend. She is a great old boat, but has a few "issues" that we are dealing with. One is a non-working fuel gauge. We have fueled up twice since leaving Waukegan and put our last 5 gallon can of fuel in this morning as we left North Port, so imagine our surprise when we motored under your bridge, and the engine suddenly just died. The wind was out of the east, and we were able to roll out the jib and sail up the bay to the marina, but not knowing its layout knew that trying to sail a big boat inside with no engine was a non-starter. We had spoken to Andy in the Marina office several times about our reservation, and he had even agreed to stay a bit late to help us out, but now we had him scambling to find us a tow. We also radioed the Coast Guard, TowBoat US, and made a general radio call looking for someone to help us into the entrance. Finally a much smaller sailboat named "Scott Free" saw our distress and offered to try and tow us in. His outboard struggled with its load, but he got us moving toward the entrance, when the radio suddenly came on and said "Rainbow, we have been monitoring you and have a full crew on the fuel dock to catch your lines". It was Josh, and he had one of the new dock hands and a man from another boat all lined up waiting for us. Rick of "Scott Free" brought us straight in, dropped the tow and the guys stopped all 40,000 pounds of us and got us secured to the dock. (the new guy lost a little skin from the rope burn!) It was now after closing time, but the crew filled our fuel tanks, and pumped out our head. Andy stuck around and registered us for the night. The the guys once again put on some gloves and helped us into our slip. Fortunately, we don't give very many marina's a chance to show us how good they can be, but your guys took the ball and ran with it. We appreciated their skill, and their brawn, but it was the attitude that sponsored this letter. They we magnificent. Helpful, kind an courteous are all good, but something just shone a little brighter today as we just knew that they were all working really hard to take the very best care of us. Guys, we really appreciate it.
The crew of "Rainbow" and owners of SV Country Dancerwww.svcountrydancer.com