July 11, 2004
Northport, MI
HAPPY SECOND BIRTHDAY TO SIDONIA!!!
July 9, 2004
 Opening Presents at Grandma’s House |
 Opening Presents at Grandma’s House |
Just a quick update: We all had a great time celebrating Bing’s birthday and visiting the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City. We said our good byes to “Grandma” and “Grandpa” and prepared the boat for our Saturday departure for the Straights of Mackinaw via Charlevoix, MI, our deadline creeping up on us. Time to move again.
Opening Presents back at the boat
It didn’t matter that we were up early (for once) as everything was against us this time. There was no wind and, forced to keep moving, we faced a long day of motoring the 35 miles to our next anchorage. We have been at this long enough now, we are starting a list of “Cruiser’s Rules” to help avoid some of the issues we are having.
Rule #1: No deadlines! When planning a cruise like this, the only deadline you want is the one for launching the boat at the beginning of the trip. Everything after is up in the air. Long before we departed, we made plans to meet friends at Cedar Point, OH based on a loose time line that we can now see is completely unrealistic. Great idea to see friends and have a nice weekend there, but bad implementation. Now, when people ask us “When will you be there?” we simply say “When we get there.” That’s the best estimation we can give. There are just too many variables to accurately predict anything – bad weather holding us back, wanting to stay longer in one place to see more, mechanical failures taking time to solve. We knew from others advise not to make promises of a schedule, but we figured we were allowing ourselves more than enough time. We were wrong. You just can’t know before you go. We still want to see our friends and go to Cedar Point, but we’ll have to make other arrangements as we can’t possibly make it there as we planned.
What is it?
This time, it is mechanical failure holding us back. During yesterday’s motor trip north, the engine began having oil pressure problems. We tried everything we could think of from simply changing oil filters to breaking down and rebuilding the oil pump. The problem is still there. We limped into Northport Harbor on weak winds and an injured engine. There isn’t much here in terms of a town, it is a small village, but there is a nice shipyard with the only marine diesel mechanics in the area. We’ll pull in there Tuesday and have professionals look things over. I’m not optimistic, as this engine had issues when I installed it. It was a risk we knew we were taking when we left. But, we’ve been pleased with its performance – until now. This brings us to our next rule:
Just What I Always Wanted
Rule #2: Buy good stuff! Buying good stuff saves time, money, and headaches. Everything that we have spent too much money on before we left has been worth its weight in gold. For example, we spent what seemed like way too much money for foul weather gear before we left. Now that we are out cruising, we realize it is worth twice a much as our foulies perform better than expected in the harsh Lake Michigan nor’westers. Our $800 GPS chart plotter, while small, knows exactly where we are, even when we don’t. Our new, high-end VHF radio with remote microphone is awesome. The Cape Horn Self-Steering Vane is priceless and I wouldn’t go anywhere with out it. The engine, however, I gave practically nothing for, cobbled it together, and have been paying for it in headaches ever since, always worrying if it was going to cause me a problem or not. So, if you are going to go, prepare and provision with quality gear.
Anyway, I’m sure we will develop more rules as we go, but now I have to go see a certain mechanic about an engine. Hopefully, we’ll have good news later this week, but I’m not ready to bet the boat on it.
We’ll keep you posted.
– Steve