Day Three in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 143 - August 21, 2017

I focused my efforts this morning, as minimal as they were, on trying to keep the repair of our wounded starboard rub rail on track. Ed from New Buffalo Marine Service called to ask the Hull Identification Number in case that was significant, and I told him I would send him that, but I also thought that he really would benefit from talking with Greg Little, Production Manager at Northwest Marine Industries, the current builder of C-Dorys.  I emailed Greg and cc:'d Ed, laying our predicament out for Greg. Ed and Greg talked on the phone, and Greg told Ed he needed Ed to confirm the shape of the rub rail channel. Greg had told Ed he thought it was the one that looked like a backwards number 1. I took a picture and emailed it to Ed. Sure enough, that is exactly what it looks like! With that Greg was able to tell Ed the product number for this rub rail. Ed will now be working on obtaining three 12 foot sections of this rub rail from his suppliers. 

Rub rail channel

Having done what we could with the rub rail, it was time for the solar eclipse! Patty Googled how to make a safe eclipse viewer, and she crafted it out of a Panko box, a square of tin foil and some white paper. There is a pinhole in the tin foil on the left that projects the image onto the white paper in the bottom of the box. You look through the hole on the right to view the projected image. It worked great! The eclipse this far north was less than total, and in fact, we barely noticed that it got darker here at all. 

Patty's DIY eclipse viewer

iPhone photo of projected image of eclipse

Before dinner, I went up to the marina office and extended for three more days, since tomorrow we would otherwise have to leave. The work on the rubrails will not be done, tomorrow looks like a terrible day for cruising anyway and this is a very pleasant marina and town!

We decided we were ready for a dinner out, and Googled the local restaurants. One of them, the Brewster Cafe, featured a "Dinner for Two," where you each get a soup or salad, then split a small pizza, split a regular entree, and finally get dessert and coffee, all for a very reasonable price. It was excellent!  The dessert was a caramel apple oatmeal cookie that Patty describes as "the size of Manhattan," and the coffee was excellent too!

We finished off the night with a nightcap with Tom and Mary, who are Loopers from Massachusetts cruising in a Mainship trawler who are in the slip next to us. We had a very pleasant evening of conversation in their cockpit, and then it was time for us to trundle down the dock back to Daydream for bed!