Trolling for Wi-Fi

Yesterday we traveled about 105 nautical miles (or about 120 land miles) at an average speed of  seven knots, motoring for all but half an hour. It was a long day, having started shortly after 3 a.m., and we didn't anchor until 8 p.m. It will be another long one today; Wayne was up and going at about 3:15, I was up at 4:45. We have to stagger our sleep on these long days so that one of us is always alert. Wayne is sleeping right now and I’m on watch. Otto Pilot is driving, so I just check the instruments periodically to make sure there's nothing ominous on the radar and that we're still on course.

The instruments on this boat are awesome, but as with all things high tech, there is a learning curve. Wayne is in his glory playing around with them. Me? Well, I let him figure it all out and then show me what I need to know.

The coolest thing happened yesterday. We attempted to get wi-fi in Houghton, and although there were signals galore, we just couldn't connect to anything. Our main objective was to upload photos to Walgreens for Wayne's mom because she doesn't have a computer to follow our blog. After spending about half an hour anchored in Houghton trying to pick up a decent wi-fi signal, we finally gave up in frustration and continued on through Portage Lake. I had our last two blog posts in my email outbox and decided, what the heck, I'll leave my computer running and hooked up to the wi-fi booster antenna and maybe I'll get lucky - sort of like throwing a hook in the water while you're boating to see if you catch any fish. I checked my email after we anchored and lo and behold, I had new email and the posts had been sent! You can be sure we'll be "trolling for wi-fi" frequently.

That works for email, and it's great that I can email posts to the blog, but actually getting online to upload photos, add links, or do anything else with it is a lot more difficult. I might be able to do that this evening when we're anchored in Grand Marais, Michigan, but I'm not counting on it. I look forward to having an extended time to fix up the blog to make it look more interesting. I'm new at this blog stuff and there's a lot to learn. I had never even seen a blog until about six months ago.

Fortunately, I have the blog set up to email me comments from others that are posted at the site. THANK YOU! to Tracy, Mary D, Denise, and Alan for your comments! It's lonely out here and it’s such a treat to hear from people. We also appreciate knowing that someone is actually reading our blog, so stop in and say hi when you get a chance, or just send an email. Do you have questions for us? I'll do an FAQ page if I get some.