We left Whitefish Point after checking on weather conditions. We were not quite ready for a repeat of yesterday. A big storm blew threw last night and the winds had subsided, somewhat. We didn't want to cross Whitefish Bay singing along to Gordon Lightfoot. For those who don't know, Whitefish Bay is where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. The lighthouse that I visited yesterday had a Shipwreck Museum. Not something that you want to contemplate while cruising the lakes.

We sailed for several hours with a shortened headsail, but again the wind was right on our stern. We crossed paths with three large lakers. One was an ore boat heading up bound to Marquette. The other two were heading down bound through the Soo. We actually had one pass us while traversing St. Mary's River. We parted ways with the "American Valor" at the Soo locks. Recreational boats are directed to the Canadian locks and the working boats pass through the larger American locks. We followed two tour boats into the Canadian lock. Another thing that I have learned. The more days that you have gone without a real shower, the greater your chances of getting your picture taken by tourists. We were the only sailboat in the lock, and all of the people on the tour boat were snapping pictures of us. Some of the tourists had video cameras. My luck I will end up on You Tube under the heading "bad hair day". (John took a picture of me handling the lines and fending off the lock walls, but you don't get to see it. That one is for the historical records only!)

We decided to hit the first marina after the locks. We are having an electrical problem that needs to be corrected. Our engine is no longer charging the batteries. We will use the extra time to do laundry and catch up on our blog. We know that if we can just get in touch with our saviors Dave Jones and Pat Noordsji, we can solve our problem.

Note to Jodi Heller: We saw the first of the Tall Ships tied up here in Sault Sainte Marie. It is heading towards Duluth.

John:

Update on leaving White Fish Point

The wind was still blowing 20 plus kts off the dock when we were ready to leave. We noticed that as soon as we released either the bow or stern line that the boat wanted to blow directly into our neighbors boat. It took awhile to figure out but we decided that Tommy and Cheryl would ease the bow and stern lines, which took considerable effort to just hang on, while I kept snubbing up the aft spring. A few minutes of this and we had the boat moved considerably aft in the slip, allowing us to power out of the slip without bumping up against anyone. I know that we could have requested assistance from our dock neighbors but it was much more satisfying to figure out a plan and actually do it our self. It would be a much more difficult task with just Cheryl and I though. Now I know why Doris E is installing a bow thruster. Our boat is just too small for one.

Update on the electrical problem. I noticed yesterday that while motoring that we were loosing amps from our house bank. How can that be? We are motoring and the batteries should be fully topped up. Investigation this morning included checking all the connections (more on that later) and the alternator belt. All seemed as it should be. Called Dave and we ran some diagnostics and traced the path of the wiring. Low and behold, one of the wires that I thought had a good connection actually didn't. It looked like it was connected but was actually broken. It was broke right at the loop connector but you couldn't see the break because of the shrink tubing. A new connector and we are back up and running. By accident, we also found the cause of the problem with the CD player. We don't use it since we got the I-pod but Tommy purchased a couple of CD's from a guy in Houghton and we got them stuck in the CD player. At the moment we seem to have no problems. We did have an issue contacting the Canadian lock yesterday. They said that they couldn't understand us with either VHF radio. Considering that we used both the fixed mount and the hand held, I'm guessing that they might have had the problem, except, I could hear both sides of their conversations with the tour boats that were locking through with us. Will look at this problem later today.