Let the Loop begin

I didn't put our progress map up last posting so here it is now. Of course the crossing to Frankfort and no longer heading North was the end of the beginning and from there on we have actually begun Looping.

As you can see we are in Manistee, which is a cute wee town up a river. Back at Frankfort (which for some crazy reason is pronounced "Frankfurt" here, even though it was named after some guy named Frank who built a Fort....yes....really) the wind had got up and several trawlers went out and came back  reporting "nasty" beam seas. We listened to the weather forecasts and they didn't seem too bad for that day, but were due to get worse the next, so it was either go, or stay at least another two days. GLASS SEA LADY had gone and hadn't come back so we figured if one 453 could do it, so could we. We went to the fuel dock for a pump out and to check out and the folk raised their eyebrows when we told them we were leaving. This further boosted our confidence (yeah right). We headed out through the breakwater where the swells were still running fairly big, turned the corner and had a super (if somewhat wet) one and a half hour trip to Manistee in 2-4ft bow quarter waves at 15 kts!!! I have had significantly worse trips crossing Bream Bay (or to Waiheke Island for that matter), so I don't quite know what the fuss was about.

We tied up to the town wall and the plugged into the shore power to find we only had one side of our 115VAC panel light up. Interestingly, it was line 2 that was alive even though the voltmeter switch was set to line 1....I guess our sparkie friends in Kenosha swapped them over during the inverter installation. At first I thought that they only had 115 volt outlets, and the problem was the side that was alive didn't include the converter/charger, so it would be as if we were on the hook as far as shore power was concerned. However, talking to the marina people resulted in our shifting a bit further along the wall to a power point that wasn't faulty (as the last one was) and we were good to go. GLASS SEA LADY was on a slip the other end of the marina, but  they strolled by and we went to dinner together and later had dessert on their boat..

This posting was really just to let y'all know where we were, so I'll leave you to it till next time.