August 14-15 2007

August 14, 2007. Today is Tuesday they tell me. I may not know what day of the week it is, but I do know the wind blew like crazy. 25 mph hour winds out of the west and southwest, kicked up 5' waves on Lake Michigan so we had a layover day in Frankfort. A young couple with a young boy left at 7am to cross Lake Michigan to Oconomowac WI in a catamaran sailboat. They did not return to port so I presume they proceeded onward and made it safely. Our day was consumed with various activities. The town is small but several restaurants with some upscale tourist shops. It was an easy walk to town and along the Main St. We stopped for lunch at Deli bakery for sandwiches. I spent part of the afternoon catching up on Store accounting. Internet connection here was spotty at best and our boat was docked right in front of the town Library so I was able to latch on to their free wireless service. The library is closed at night but people were sitting around the outside of the library (they had nice benches outside) to catch the wireless internet service. Not only boaters, but people drove up in their cars to take advantage of the service. For the techies, perhaps you are wondering how I receive internet service. I subscribe to Verizon's EVDO service which you may have seen advertised. High speed service is only available in the big cities but usually, if you have cell phone service, you can obtain speed equivalent to about twice dialup speed. I have a Verizon EVDO card which is inserted in a Kyrocea wireless router which broadcasts to the laptops in our boat. I also have a 8' antenna and a 3watt booster that is supposed to amplify a weak cell signal but I have not found it to be effective so it is off for inspection and or repair. Allison and I rode our bikes to the A&W Root Beer stand for Root Beer floats. Connor and I rode around Lake Betsie as well as to the grocery store. They have a very nice bicycle trail around the Lake. It is a very pretty setting here. The town of Frankfort sits right on the edge of Lake Betsie and on the far side of the lake are some rather size able tree covered hills. The evening meal consisted of steaks and vegetables on the grill

August 15, 2007 In a previous post I mentioned that we have not stopped in all of the ports that we would like to have stopped to enjoy. For several years I have had a malady of the hand called Dupuytren's Conracture.http://http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/dupuytrens-contracture/DS00732 .My left little finger is the culprit. My Dr. has been observing it and recently decided I needed to have it operated on. I wanted to put it off until Thanksgiving, but the Dr. , a hand surgeon specialist, muttered something about he might have to take my finger off to fix it if I waited that long. The surgery is set for Monday Aug 20. Janna, our daughter and her husband Matt were scheduled to pick us and their kids up Sunday the 19th. That would work, as it also time for the kids to go back to school on the 22nd. However it seems the Dr's office lost the transcript of my pre-surgery visit so I have to see him again Friday before the surgery on Monday. That really kabolixed up all our plans, so now Matt is taking a day off of work to pick us up wherever we land. I also will dock the boat for a while, as the healing takes place. The weather forecast for the Lake for the next few days looks ominous. However it appears there is a window of opportunity today where there will be light winds. Today we arose early and shoved off at 7:30 am for White Lake which is just north of Muskegon. It is 98 miles to our destination where a fellow Looper (Skip Cook of Popeye) works at Moxie Marine and he will keep an eye on the boat while we are gone. The Yanmars were cranked up to 3000 rpm and we averaged a little over 15mph, arriving at 2pm. The Lake was calm. However fog developed in the last hour of travel, so we kept two pairs of eyes out the window and a special eye on the radar screen. We were greeted by a light rain shower as we docked. We are near the towns of Whitehall and Montague MI. Pretty little towns. Matt arrived about 10pm. He will stay overnight and then our crew and Matt will journey back to Ft. Wayne. It will be hard to leave the Boat. We were just getting settled in to a routine. We have had a great time with Allison and Connor--they have been good company. For now I will sign off and I send you an email when the adventure continues. The picture is of Allison with the White River in the background