Week #7 SOUTH TOWARDS CHICAGO

  


      Port Washington is a nice little village. It is geared for visitors and lake fisherman. The charter boats are out early Sunday morning. Barb and I dress and head for the Methodist Church, at .7 mile it is the closest protestant church. We get there at 9 thinking that is their church service time from what we heard on the phone recording. Wrong. They have changed service order, and Sunday School is now first, starting at 9:15. We attend the adult class, and leave afterwards. "Somewhere in Time" and SummerTime have a date to travel south to Racine while the weather is good. We get underway about 11:10. We have to travel a little faster than normal (9.8kt vs 8.3) to catch the other boat as they pulled out 10 minutes in front of us. The first part of the ride is pretty good, but as we pass Milwaukee, the wind picks up. And so does the wave size.

MILWAUKEE, THE CITY WE PASSED BY

The last hour and a half is bumpy. We get to Racine late in the afternoon, just before 4:30.

TUG PUSHING BARGE BETWEEN MILWAUKEE AND RACINE, & BUILDING WHITE CAPS

Reef Point Marina is huge by my standards, and has two entrances off of the harbor entrance channel. We fueled before going to our dock. The four of us went downtown and ate Mexican at Casablanca de Mexico. A great dinner.

RACINE LIGHTHOUSE

     On Monday morning, Barb and I get up and make plans to get the Lenovo to Best Buy. We walk back downtown to a bus stop, and catch the bus on route #7 out to the Target/Mall area where Best Buy is. We give them the Lenovo, tell them we are traveling, and ask for a quick turn around. There is a grocery, "Pick-n-Save" two stores from Best Buy down at the bus stop. We go back there and buy staples. It is the largest and nicest grocery store we have been in since the Kroger in Port Huron. We catch the bus back to the marina with our groceries. These are the first city bus rides I have had since commuting to our Cleveland Office back in the late 90s. We get a call around 6 that the Lenovo is ready. We head back to Best Buy on the bus. All four trips have cost us $12., which is less than one Uber ride. Racine has no taxi fleet. The Geeks at Best Buy have overcome the W10 issues (except for 1 in sleep mode), and we are ready to publish again. Some of the things we had downloaded programs for: printer/scanner, cameras, ? are gone, but not too hard to get back on to the laptop.
      On Tuesday, we start getting ready to leave to go farther south. It is 10:50 when we leave the dock headed to Waukegan, 31 miles away. We get to Waukegan a little before 1:30. Another big marina, and nice. Lots of sailboats here. The ride down was quite pleasant. Much better than the last stretch into Racine this past Sunday. Chuck picks up the parts waiting for him here. After dinner, we all walk up to the ice cream parlor at the edge of the marina. They are making their own waffle cones, and the smell is inviting. I get a new to me chocolate malt flavor on one of those good smelling waffle cones.
       On Wednesday we are awoke by a horn. I think that this is a ship's horn. I look out the port side window, and the freighter "Sam Laud" is backing down the channel towards the silos. I hustle to the flybridge with the camera. The ship backs to the side of the channel, and is unloading in less than an hour. Later we walk to Larsen's Marine to buy some supplies. I get a new horn button for the upper helm, along with the one fuel filter I did not have for the genset. The Sam Laud is sitting at American Gypsum right by our walking route. When we come back from Larsen, about noon, the ship appears to have stopped unloading.

SAM LAUD BACKING IN TO UNLOAD

We have lunches from the deli and Dockside Dogs just outside the marina gate. Great food and view. The horn button does not totally clear the horn blowing problem. But moving the ground wire termination did. On my way through the salon, I decide to hit the horn button on the lower station. Only a squeak. This seems not right, as it sends its current to the downstream side of the upper helm button. I pull the instrument panel face off, and notice that there are several wires not quite like the diagram from Mainship. The power feed has been connected to spade connectors for sharing, and some of the branch wires are way too small for what they are feeding. I re-wire the three items, with the appropriate size wires. The horn now works. We go to dinner at Rosati's pizza in town. The Chicago style pizza is great. We walked here, and had to cross the Metra tracks on the way in. Going back we find a better route over a bridge.
     On Thursday, the wind is blowing pretty good, and the lake is covered with whitecaps. Avocet arrives, and talking to them we find out it is pretty bumpy out there. We scrub the plans to leave for the day. In the afternoon I mount a grab rail on each side of the salon roof just outside the forward glass. It gives a safe place to hang on to when going forward. The reach from the factory rail on the flybridge side to the handrail on the coach roof was longer than could be reached. This grab rail hopefully makes a forward walk in stormy seas a lot safer.
     On Friday, we wake and the wind is even stronger. We pay for another day at the dock. I do a couple of small items on SummerTime that have been things Barbara wanted for a while. One is to hang a gear hammock. We have a hard time to figure out where to put it. We finally settle on the anchor locker bulkhead over our heads on the berth. It is only good for small light things, but it gets them off of a shelf as loose items. There is a Latino Festival advertised for the block by the ice cream parlor. We go there thinking we will score on some nice Mexican food. Did not see any food vendors, so we head up the hill again to Rosati's for pizza or pasta. We are not disappointed in our plates. On the way back to the boats, we stop at  the Festival to listen to some music.