Menominee or Bust

Mark confirms our course

Today we cruised across Green Bay to Menominee, MI, the beginning (or end) of the Upper Peninsula. It's only about 18 miles from here, but with a cruising speed of 8-9 miles per hour, it is not a quick trip.  Before we left Sturgeon Bay, we topped off our tanks with 235 gallons of diesel fuel. And I thought our truck had a big tank! The fuel purchase came with a free pump out of our holding (sewage) tank, which eased the pain a miniscule amount.

Anyway, we headed out on the Bay. We used our autopilot, but fought the wind quite a bit. We have an iPad app called iNavX that lets us download charts and plot a course- it's very cool. It also runs on my iPhone, but that display is too small to be useful.

iPad running iNavX

On nautical charts white colored areas are deep water- the darker the blue color on the chart- the shallower the water is. Kinda counter-intuitive in my opinion. Tan areas are land.

Since the ride was bumpy, we each carried a whistle. When one of us went down below  (to check the engines, make lunch, etc.) we blew the whistle to let the person upstairs know that we had not fallen off the boat or anything. You can't always count on hearing a big splash, I guess. Carrying our lunch up top in the rolling seas was a challenge!We also use "marriage savers" which are headsets with mics when we are casting off and coming into the dock to tie up. The nickname is appropriate- we can quietly voice our frustrations to/with each other without screaming at the top of our lungs!

One of our readers asked about my goal of not smashing my head on the door frame when entering the boat this week. Keep your fingers crossed- so far, so good- my head is injury free!