Cheryl's Notes:

We got an early start today, knowing that we had over 50 miles to cover. No wind, so motoring was the business of the day. It was a long, but uneventful day. We arrived in East Tawas and pulled into the town dock. Topped off our diesel tanks and pulled into a slip for the night. East Tawas is a cute little waterfront town. The state run town dock is part of a public pier. The public beach is right in front of a big campground. Unfortunately, the town closes up early on Sundays. They did have a really cool store called Normans. It was filled with outdoor clothing and gear. I bought myself an inflatable inner tube. Now I can float around the water when we are at anchor.

We were able to find a really good pizza place for my birthday dinner. The crust was from homemade dough and really tasty. I bought a brownie sundae from the ice cream shop next door, and brought it back to the boat in a to go cup. Tomorrow morning we are going to try to get John up the mast to install our new antenna.

John's Notes:

Until today, I have never been on big water without some form of radio communications. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, we lost our primary VHF antenna at the top of the mast riding out a blow in Put-In-Bay. A couple of day ago we were able to get a replacement but were relying on our hand held until we got to a place where we could go up the mast and install the replacement. As luck would have it, we had a problem with the antenna on the hand held. Not a problem, we have a spare antenna for that. The only problem is that we didn't know that we had a problem until we needed the radio. Unfortunately, we had forgotten where we had put the spare antenna. Not a good idea. Being out on big water without primary communications and a backup is not a good idea. In the area where we were, we could have probably used our cell phones but you just can't depend on having service when you can't see land. Tomorrow morning I will install the new antenna and check it out before we go any further.