Our friends left at 1500Z this morning on their way north in At Last.  We plan a 1400Z departure on Inspiration headed for Muskegon, MI,  a 40 mile journey, with weather alternates of Port Sheldon or Grand Haven.  We intend to anchor out at least 50% of the time this year.

After Muskegon, the second day plan is to stay at Pentwater with Ludington as the good sailing day destination.  From there it will be Frankfort or Arcadia. and from there to Manistee and on to Leland.  After that we have not planned yet but I will post on the blog when we have bandwidth.

Hopefully, I can take some good pictures this year and I will try to post them as a slideshow – for every 100 pictures I take 1 turns out OK and 1/10th of those are really good.

I awoke about 0430 to a rocking boat and some distant lightning.  About 0500 the rain started and lasted until 1100 hrs.  The barometer has been relative steady since 1100 hrs yesterday.  Skies are now overcast and humidity is mid-90′s with light SW winds.  It has been a pretty crappy last few days with intense heat, rain and high humidity.  It looks like the rain has mostly passed.

During the height of the rain, Fred of Tower Boat Sales, showed the boat to a prospective buyer.  It was not the best day to show the boat but at least it showed the boat does not leak at all.  He asked a lot of questions which I like because I cannot think of all things to include into the conversation.  Since we will be cruising for a few weeks we agreed to re-visit the whole thing when we return.

A big storm, but not the worst we have seen, hit this morning and dropped a tree across the power line feeding the marina.  When I awoke at 0700 power was off.  Earlier I awoke and turned off the Shore Power and was running off the batteries.  The power was back on by 1130.   More bad weather is expected this afternoon on a falling a barometer.

As I write we are hunkered down in the boat using the air conditioner but is real nice in here now.    It was 90+ °F and clear skies in light air and very humid.  So we figured why suffer if we have aircon?  Before we made the decision to start the air we stood in the pool but decided to fire it up.  We went to listen to the music in the park while the boat cooled down a bit.

I started surfing the net to try and find a Honda or Yahama 2KW generator but there are none – I mean none – on Craigslist.  Amazon is touching $1000 for their units.  Last winter when it was really cold the Honda’s were selling for $800 if you could find them.  I would like to have one as a back up for the boat so I do not have to run boat  the engine.  Another wish list item – sigh.

I have reliable internet with the Captifi from RadioLabs at distances of 1/2 mile over water.  I have included a picture above to show how I have it mounted.  I am happy with unit but the software drivers are a little flaky but I found a work-around:  Start the machine and then plug in the USB.  For some reason, if you start with the USB plugged in it fails to acquire about half the time.

I have been remiss about blogging lately.  The days have been short as we prepare for the cruise.  The past two days have been spent installing the wind generator that we have never used.  It will be interesting to see if it has any value in the winds here on LM.  I did the job correctly this time, with a switch for OFF, ON and SHORT in the aft Lazerette, plus a fuse near the battery and new 70A diodes mounted on a heat sink.

Previously we installed a “temporary” hailer horn to use with the DSC radio.  The radio will output fog audio depending on the GPS velocity readings.  It also outputs anchor, aground and siren signals at adjustable frequencies.  Cool stuff this radio has – a Uniden 525 with Wham4 wireless remote.  I also think that I can use the horn for the GPS anchor alarm output but that is for another day.

The month of July has gone fast. We are almost ready to go now but are awaiting the dingy that is being repaired at Wolf’s Marine (they are expensive but the best at inflatable repair).  Our friends in S/V Paramour left yesterday and it makes us a little jealous.

We discovered that our dingy had a gaping hole just at the junction of the floor and the inflated sides.  That is why with only myself in the dingy everything was OK and when SAM was in front it scooped in more water than could be ejected through the transom outlet.  I took it to Wolf’s Marine in Benton Harbor for the $260 repair – I hope it was worth it – because the dingy is on life support now.  A new one will be $1200 plus all the extras and registration.

Here is my boat chore list for this week:

• Purchase and execute a temporary Fog Horn install with connectors and 20′ of speaker cable to connect to the DSC Radio Hailer.  COMPLETED.
• Install wind generator mast and configure wiring to allow installation. COMPLETED.
• Complete install of the Wind Bugger.  NEXT WEEK.

It has been HOT, HOT.  I re-installed the airconditioner we bought earlier this season.  The AC has provided a much needed relief from the mid-90′s heat index with actuals of 90+.  I sweat 3 quarts today outside doing the work.

FLASH.  Last night SAM said, “What is that noise?”.  It sounded to my electrical educated ear as a buzzing / arcing sound but sans smoke or acrid odor.  I shut off the Shore power last night and ran on batteries over night.  Today morning we re-applied power and same sounds emanating from power panel and Heart Charger/Inverter.  I banged the 2500 Combi Heart unit and so far the unit has functioned OK:  I think it was a stuck relay.  Pray with me ……………………………..BTW – got an RMA # just in case but I divine that it will not fail -  guys at Elkhart unit were very helpful.

We have been pretty quiet the past few days. Yesterday would have been a good sailing day but the skies were overcast and it was cold. Today it is very foggy and cool but with a rising barometer. We just bought a Sunday paper and that is a first. We intend to drive back to Indiana for a few days to pick up the parts and software for my laptop that had a bigtime HD crash with all data lost during one of those automatic Windows updates. Boo Hoo. It will take me several days to get the new drive properly configured so I can do my website design services remotely again.

We had a great 5 hr sail today.  The NW winds allowed us to point up towards the north and follow the coastline.  We sailed up to Holland and then back towards the home port.  We played around a bit doing gybes and tacks.  All afternoon the waves kept building but they were Ok on Inspiration.

Today it is in the mid-70′s (around 23ºC) with sunny skies and a rising barometer and NW light winds – Perfect.  I potted flowers for the end of the dock – Pink Petunia’s like thise pictured.

We were informed our new water heater has arrived and the marina will install it today or tomorrow.  Just a word of warning out there:  Force 10 is out of business and was taken over by Kuuma.  Our defective heater is only three years old but the warranty is 2 years.  I am not impressed with Force 10 products and maybe that is why they went out of business.

At the end of last season it had just started to leak (about 2 months after warranty expiration).  My buddy has a Raritan that is 25+ years old and it still is pumping out hot water.  Advice is to pay more for a good unit and manufacturer.  Oh well, maybe we can weld  the tank and have a spare.  I’ll drill out the pop rivets when they get it out to see what happened.

Last week was real hot – near 90ºF  4 days in a row – and very humid so we bought a window airconditioner for about $100 to put in the companionway and blow cooled air.  It is a 5000 BTU 40# unit and it is barely adequate.  It does not have sufficient capacity to cool down a boat that is already hot.  After the sun goes down it will cool the salon pretty good and the air becomes much drier and is comfortable.