Michigan-made Miss Margy new Mackinac Island ferry

On a brilliant Sunday afternoon in Mackinaw City, Gov. Rick Snyder and Bill Shepler simultaneously whacked the aluminum prow of Miss Margy with bottles of ceremonial “champagne,” officially welcoming the boat — the first ferry ever to be built in northern Michigan — into the Shepler’s Mackinac Island Ferry fleet.

The contents of the bottles — whatever it was — splashed not into the water, but onto the floor of a cavernous temporary dry-dock built to house Miss Margy while Shepler workers apply the finishing touches — the “rouge and lipstick,” as the current Shepler patriarch put it. Gussied up, the 85-foot, $3.8 million boat will finally fulfill her destiny — hauling fudge-seekers between the mainland and Mackinac Island — later this summer.

Miss Margy will be the largest of the Shepler ferries, carrying up to 281 passengers at a time at a top speed of about 40 mph.

Meanwhile, the real bubbly — a sparkling wine from Suttons Bay — was served by hustling waitresses to all of the 250 guests at the christening. They raised their plastic flutes while emcee Paul W. Smith of Detroit’s WJR Radio gave the toast: “To all the sailors that came before us. To the captains that will pilot Miss Margy into the tough waters of the Great Lakes …”

The birth of Miss Margy was a true rose in Gov. Snyder’s concept of “economic gardening” — nurturing businesses with roots already planted in Michigan soil. Normally commercial ferries are built at shipyards in places like Louisiana and Wisconsin. But Shepler offered the job to Moran Iron Works of Onaway and CEO Tom Moran, whose company had never built a ferry before, accepted the challenge. Ultimately, the construction, which took four months, included the products and services of 20 Michigan companies.

On May 27, Miss Margy — all 70 tons of her — was loaded onto a semi-trailer for the precarious trip overland from Onaway to a deep-water port in Rogers City; she then sailed the 50 miles to the Shepler docks.

Miss Margy is named after CEO Bill Shepler’s mother, who, with her husband, “Cap,” launched what is now the third-generation family business in 1945.

Read John Schneider’s daily blog at www.johnschneiderblog.com.