Migrating North

We started the northward migration from our Arizona winter home the last full week of March.  The cats, while not amused by the 1600 mile drive, are tolerating it better.  Rather than individual carriers, we use a soft sided pet pen sold at the www.drfostersmith.com web site.  That way they are together and have more room to stretch out.  Additionally, we have a litter box available outside the pen for their use.  At the smallest sign of agitation, Marcia will make it available to them which they both did at least once as we were driving along.

Upon arrival at our winter moorage in Eagle Harbor, we’ve been immersed in getting the boat ready for the summer cruise.  We had a few equipment issues that needed resolving and we preemptively do other things because we’ve used the boat enough that things are wearing out.

We managed to take care of everything on the list and start our cruise on Sunday, April 26.  The first stop was in Anacortes to fill fuel tanks for the season and have routine service performed on our furnace.  A side benefit was meeting up with friends Natala and Don Goodman.  They’ve both retired and now live in a newly remodeled home on Lake Samish.  Their retirement indulgence is a Cessna 182 on which they are going to put floats.  Should everything come together, they might fly up to B.C. and meet us somewhere.  We’d love to see that happen!

The morning we were leaving Anacortes for the next leg of the trip north, we got an alarm on our autopilot saying that it was not receiving the compass heading data from our GPS compass shortly after we turned on the navigation electronics.  We switched to our backup electronic compass and continued to monitor the status of the primary compass as we left Anacortes.  After doing a lot of tests, we decided to head back to our winter moorage to figure out the problem. 

We ended up taking the unit to the manufacturer, Comnav, in Vancouver.  After testing and discussion with them, we concluded that the problem was precipitated by moisture build up in the unit.  Also, the way it was wired into the navigation system was not optimal.  We’ve now dried the unit out, took actions to mitigate future moisture issues and made the recommended wiring changes.  The unit appears to be operating stably now.

At this point, we are targeting Wednesday, May 6 for the second start to our summer cruise.  The migration northward continues.