Grand Marais, MI

Third night on the boat. Thursday morning we did some grocery shopping and even though it was very gray, the water was flat so we decided to head to Grand Marais. We left around 11 am and it took us almost 7 hours to travel 70 miles. The trip went well, very easy with the auto pilot. We eve cleaned all cushions, etc. on the bridge while underway. Had no problem getting into Grand Marais, we are the first boat to spend the night here this year.

I wanted to test my jump starter so before bed last night I switched to one battery, shut off the battery charger and AC power to the refrigerator. In the morning the head and fresh water pumps were still working but I couldn't start either the main engine or the generator. The generator currently does not have it's own battery. I tried my jump starter and it would start the generator but not the main engine. When I swathed to the other battery I couldn't start either one. So we turned on the battery charger and went for a walk. When we came back still nothing, which was very perplexing. In trying to figure out which battery was number one and which was number two, I found out that 3 of the battery terminals were loose and that was the problem. We were lucky we didn't have any problems on the madien voyage. Guess that's why your first few times ou are the shakedown cruise. Once I got everything tightened up the engine started on the battery that was off all night and started on the other battery after a short time with the battery charger on.

By this time it was after noon plus the fog had been rolling in and out all morning, so we decided to spend a second night here. While Mary was cleaning the outside of the boat I cleaned all the below deck bilges and also did some serious poking around and now have a much better understanding of how things are wired, etc. I even found a spot to install a dedicated generator battery. Once I was done in the bilges, I helped clean the boat and went through the deck box and storage compartments. We are slowly figuring out where we want to store what.

We unfolded the bikes and took them out for the first time and found very nice little restaurant which was had an old dining car as it's front. The food was very good everything was homemade. The Soo is 90 miles away with no place to stop. The weather forecast is for more patchy fog tomorrow, hopefully it won't be too bad and we can continue with our trip.

John