East Jordan on Lake Charlevoix July 28, 2016

It started to rain about 4:30 this morning. Poor Jim. I had not planned on it raining and had a bunch of stuff outside that I needed to bring in. I woke him up in the process. It was a gentle rain that lasted until about 8:30. I laid in bed listening to Fox news until about 7. Jim was up and had already made coffee and his bed. Good crew!

There was a Farmer’s Market that was really nice. It was the best one I have seen on this trip so far. We had cereal and bananas for breakfast, plus little white donuts. My morning water check showed no new accumulations – yes! I wrote to Mark at Parker and said to tell Dick Parker that I was filing a warranty claim for my water heater installation at his suggestion - $1.70 for pipe compound and thousands for mental anguish and suffering.  It appears the problem was a leaking fitting at the water heater intake. The leak happened to drop inside the area where the water tanks were located, and drained out from there. This is why I thought it was the tanks themselves leaking.

We did a final inspection of the bilge after our trip today. No water, and I even filled the water tanks today. I am officially declaring our water emergency over! And it appears the AIS and radio are working well together. It's too early to declare that for sure, but we did successfully do a radio check about 6 miles away, much better than before. 

We took a nice walk after our visit to the Farmer’s Market in Charlevoix. If Kerry had been here I am sure we would have purchased several things. Jim bought a t-shirt at a local shop. I overheard him saying that he was replacing my wife for a week. I asked him to rephrase that statement. We passed a home planning business in a little tiny building. Kerry would be good at a business like this.

The trip to East Jordan was 12.4 miles and took 1 hour and 45 minutes. Leaving the harbor we saw the sailboat that almost sunk and was towed in by the Coast Guard. Apparently the rudder broke off and water came in. It was a beautiful trip. Lots of interesting homes and boats to look at. We even passed a cable ferry where if you look closely you can see the cables on both sides of the boat.

The marina is small, but rustic. There are three attendants, although none came to help us dock, not that we really needed any help. One dock boy did recommend the Tilted Skillet restaurant for lunch. It was quite good but we both overate, so minimum food for dinner tonight, after our proper happy hour of course.

East Jordan is quite small, a perfect place to drop out of the world. It is pretty though, and has a big plant, East Jordan Industries. It is a company town for sure. They have a great old train engine right off the marina. It was made in 1908.

Doritos was the major snack with our cocktails tonight. Neither Jim or I was particularly hungry after cocktails tonight. I had a salad and leftover hush puppies from lunch. Jim added a sandwich to that. The East Jordan band was practicing while we enjoyed our dinner. We walked over and listened to them for about 45 minutes. It was a nice way to end the day.

Meanwhile the ladies in the family are off to Arlington VA for Stefanie's shower. Kerry, Anne, Aubrey and our sister in law Barb set sail about 1:00. Marianna and Peter sailed 12 hours from Kincardine to Sarnia today. Wow!