8. August 2011 by admin.

The Great Adventure is over.  Sailing from Duluth, MN to Thunder Bay Ontario.  That is around 400 miles round trip.  One thing we found the people interested in our trip liked was the SPOT personal locator tracking service. Every 10 minutes it sends a beacon to a satellite which in turn logs it on a web page.  So everyone at home could track us the entire trip.  It also has a ‘check-in’ button which we would use to send an ‘all ok’ message in the morning and at the end of the day.  There are three other buttons which we luckily didn’t need to use, ‘Things are getting challenging’, ‘Notify authorities of a non life threatening issue’, and an SOS.  The later two going directly to authorities along with whoever we setup to receive them. 

Here are some of the totals for supplies used on the trip.  A total of 12 days on the water, 10 nights at marina’s, and 2 at anchor:  55.9 gallons of diesel fuel,  14 1/2 gallons of bottled water,  48 cans of soda, 33 beers, 2 boxes of Capri Suns, 2 loaves of bread, 2 packages hamburger buns, 2 dozen eggs, 1/2 gallon milk, 4 hamburger patties, 4 steaks, 1 box mac and cheese, 2 boxes cereal, 1 home made pizza, 2 frozen pizzas, 12 peaches, 6 apples.  (This was for 4 people).

Favorite marina in general was at Grand Marais, MN.  Has the feel of a New England fishing community, nicely run marina/campground, but not too many open slips for transients, For our 37 foot sailboat there was only a couple options at the dock.  We could have however also used a mooring,  but you have the issue of always having to use the dinghy to get ashore.  Tied for cheapest fuel at $4.05 with Superior’s Barkers Island.  Bathrooms here are a bit more rustic and shared with the campground but clean.  Grand Marais, MN

 Favorite anchorage in the bight of Susie Island is a very snug spot for about 3 to 4 boat’s.  We were the only ones there on the way home.  Nordlyset at anchor on Susie Island

Favorite restaurent, somewhat subjective, everyone had their own, but mine was the Gunflint Tavern in Grand Marais, MN, with second place being Gargoyles in Thunder Bay.

Speaking of Thunder Bay, the marina there is under construction but it appears to me all docks are in place and now they are working on the landscaping around the marina, still probably a year off from being done.  But based on the plans it looks as though it will be a very nice place.  If you are not on the ‘A’ pier though you will be a long ways away from the office, bathrooms, etc.

Silver Bay probably had the nicest marina facilities along the way, but unfortunatly is a couple miles from anything on shore which is a big drawback if you need supplies.

All in all a great trip, motored more then we wanted, but then that is Lake Superior weather.  Only two malfunctions, both occuring after a day of pounding against 5 foot waves, the deck light broke and is hanging by the wires, and the autopilot all of a sudden started asking for a security code to activate it, which we had never set.  So, I guess I will BOAT, (break out another thousand) to get those two things fixed and plan for next years adventure.

Posted in Lake Superior, Sailing, Technology | 1 Comment »

23. October 2010 by admin.

About a year ago I built a new pc from scratch.  I’ve done it before it really isn’t all that hard and you get a much more powerful pc for the price you pay.  For the second time in the past 20 years though I have had a hard drive fail.  Lucky for me it was my backup drive so the recovery will be much easier.  Twenty years, 2 hard drives, not a bad ratio but when I started looking for a new drive to install I wanted to insure I found one rated well by other builders and unlikely to fail again.  I have to admit to being somewhat surprised by what I found.  I buy all my hardware from NewEgg.com, the prices are cheap, no sales tax, and it’s a well respected company for getting your computer parts.  Once you purchase something you have the option to rate it, much like you may see on other sites such as Amazon.

 I wanted a new drive with at least 1TB of space so I limited my search to that and found 85 matches.  Out of the 85 only 1 had a 5 star rating by users.  That was a Samsung Spinpoint 5400 RPM, 2TB drive, but even that one had 7% 1 and 2 star reviews.  So, whats a pc builder to do?  In the end I decided it’s basically a crap shoot.  Pick one with at least a 4 or 5 star rating and make sure you have a backup drive.  Once you have a backup drive installed, USE IT!  You don’t have to set up a fancy RAID system, just use the Windows backup utility to schedule a regular(i.e. weekly) backup to a dedicated drive for just that.  Frankly I’m paranoid enough about losing my data I also store some of my important data in the ‘cloud’ (encrypted) just to give me a little more piece of mind.   Bottom line, don’t expect your hard drive to last forever.  They ALL fail at some point.  If you don’t feel comfortable enough to open your case and install a second drive you can now get external drives that connect to your pc via a USB connection for very reasonable prices.

Posted in Computers | 1 Comment »