We Are On Our Way
20 July 2009 | Houghton/Hancock, MI
Sylvia
Update July 20, 2009
We are on our way! We left Barker's Island Marina Friday morning, 7/17 after a fine send off by family and our friends from the Twin Cities, Superior, and the marina. The weather was fine but the wind was none existent so we motored to Rocky Island in the Apostle Islands. We anchored for the night and had a very peaceful night's rest.
We rose early on 7/18 and had three hours of great sailing. Eos, the mother of the morning winds, was good to the yacht Eos but evidently she only ordered them for only for those three hours. So it was back to motoring for the rest of the day. We made good time and arrived at Houghton/Hancock in the Keweenaw Waterway at 8:30 in the evening.
We stayed overnight and Sunday,7/19 to do some adjustment on the backflow valve for the #2 diesel tank. It was sticking when the fill pump for the day tank came on so we couldn't get any diesel out of the tank. We hope that we have that fixed. We should know by tomorrow. We have plenty of fuel in the other tanks so we will be fine for several days without that tank. After we got that issue taken care of we pumped the head, took on water, and topped off the diesel tanks. Using the Mister Filter filter slows down the filling process so that we no longer have any concerns about rapid filling causing overflow. Then it was motor for a couple of hours to the lower entry to the Keweenaw and tied up at the wall there to spend the night.
Today we are back in Houghton/Hancock. Rich and Marba have to leave us here. Marba was going in for foot surgery this fall after the trip. However, it turned out that her foot has gotten worse and is hurting much worse than she expected. Any walking or stepping down or practically any standing on it is really causing her pain. So they decided it just wasn't going to work for them. They are now off to Ashland and to try to see how soon she can get the foot surgery. Hopefully, it will be soon so she can get rid of the pain.
We will travel on just the two of us. It will just be sooner than we had planned. We will miss their help and their company but we understand that being in pain and miserable does not make for a fun trip. We will be heading back down the Keweenaw today and will overnight at the wall at the lower entry again and then will set off tomorrow.