Onward to Racine and Some Repairs

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At 04:45 sharp, Craig and Niki showed up at the dock to help us throw our lines. If they are representative of the people that we will meet on our Great Loop adventure, we are truly blessed.

On our way down, we had to stop off in Milwaukee to check in with a crazy bunch of friends that I have worked out with 3 days a week for the last few years and who I will dearly miss. We do something called rucking, basically walking with a 40 pound weighted pack on your back and then lifting heavy sandbags for 45 minutes after that. They were out this morning and waited for us to come by, so we swung into the north gap of the Milwaukee breakwater and Dan the selfie many took this fun picture of us.

After that, it was onto Racine, WI at Reefpoint Marina. We got in around 10:30 in the morning and got into our slip, tied up and all of our cords plugged in, just in time to have a friend, from a group of bikers that I ride with, they are technically a motorcycle organization, (Hey words matter in this world) known as Guardians of the Children pick me up so that I could make the September meeting. (Shh, don't tell my wife that I set up our departure date with this in mind.)

Monday morning at 07:30, we motored over to Pugh Marine to get hauled out so that we could get my broken bow thruster propeller replaced. They pulled us at 8:15 sharp and my mechanic, Jonathan Moore, from Nice Guys Motor works showed up at 9:00, the deed was done by 9:30 and they put us right back in the water and we headed back over to our slip at Reefpoint for the rest of the day. I cannot recommend both Pugh and Nice Guy's Motor works highly enough, the did what the promised and if anything over delivered. Since the travel lift was busy we didn't think we would be back in the water till mid afternoon, but they put us back in right away and were back in our slip by 10:30.

The rest of the day is going to be spent reorganizing the boat and tomorrow we head for Chicago.