We have RADAR!

Yes, it’s true. After years of planning and effort, and much fretting and stressing, Pachina Mia has the eyes of Superman!

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration (as Ann would point out and insist on correcting 😉 ). We can’t see through brick walls or see what underwear people have on, but we can peer through fog and darkness to see boats and other hard things. And we can even see rain clouds approaching, so pretty cool!

And not to toot my own horn, but the problem was almost exactly what I’d suspected it was all along. The connection between two data cables was the problem. One side had somehow got mangled (probably my fault when pulling the cable through a tight hole). Ann un-mangled it and voila! Instant on!

Of course, now that we have functioning radar we have to learn how to use it. It still mostly looks like blurps on a screen, but I’m sure with practice we’ll begin to understand how to interpret it all.

In the meantime the water keeps rising, and work continues on our little floating home. Lake Ontario is still inching up, but more slowly now. The current prediction only calls for a few more inches of rise by mid-June, but it will remain high for the rest of the season. This should make our down-stream run even faster (and scarier in some places!).

The boat/home job list is both shrinking and growing. Our head sink is turning out to be a bigger challenge than previously thought, and we’re still waiting for better weather to climb the mast, but things are progressing. The big thing is we now have a plan for Ann’s tooth, and we know what we’re doing with our bikes. The tooth is being scraped out and repaired, and the bikes are headed for our friend’s place in Rossport (Selim to be exact), on the north shore of Lake Superior. Cathie and Joe (and Maggie Muffins) are the sweetest people ever. It will be great to make the drive up to their place, and to spend some time with them.

The tooth thing meant a trip to Ottawa, which was great. We drove our bikes, and I re-discovered all the muscles I used to know so well, but have not used in a long time; in other words, I got quite sore ;-). But it was a great ride and a great trip. Mom and Kathy were fun to hang out with as always. And we got our cat fix in too!

We head back to Ottawa in a day or so for Root Canal, round II. Then it’s back here for a few days before beginning our run up north. Our plan is to have the boat ready to go before we head to Rossport. We’ll see…