June 11, 2004 We are aboard Reverie at our dock at Duncan Bay Boat Club in Cheboygan, Michigan. This has been a busy first month! To back up, we got an offer on the house in mid April and closed on May 11 after three hectic weeks. We left our household goods in storage in Texas and drove both (very full!) cars to Michigan. Launching the boat on May 18 went about as normal and we enjoyed good weather for our 15-mile motor trip here to our marina. The first task was to get the sails on and see that everything is working. We endured the gray, cold and rainy final days of May and, with the arrival of June, the sun has appeared and the days are warming -- boat-life begins! Our first challenge was stowing all the things we (she!) moved aboard with us. We never cease to marvel at the storage space available and everything is now put away in its proper place. Another big chore is learning how to use all of the new stuff. The radio and new GPS each come with more functions and bigger manuals than the units they replaced. We also have a new cell phone with those same problems. Boat project work began with the installation of a new radio. Since then I have installed a screen on the fresh water system and have installed storage for our new large, round fenders and for our new portable generator. We have removed the old lettering for the hailing port of Ann Arbor and changed it to Cheboygan, MI. Bobbie has tackled the job of removing the old, peeling letters and has now painted the name on our dinghy. Bobbie and I have been learning how to use the Internet for all of our business processing. The Public Library here in Cheboygan has free Internet access but we can’t use our laptops there. We regularly get online via the pay phone here at the marina but the connection speed is quite slow. One evening we waited 30 minutes when some pictures had been attached to an email! That taught us to check the mail on the web, first, so that we can look at the attachments there and plan for when we do the download. The weather is improving in early June and the boat project list is going down. We are waiting for the canvas man to finish screens for the cockpit. We will drive down to Ann Arbor next week to see Jim's folks and then will provision the boat for our summer cruising. We expect to leave our home marina on June 20 for a six to eight-week cruise. We will begin in lower Georgian Bay, be in the North Channel by the middle of July and coming back to Michigan in late July or early August. Look for an update when we get back. We'll be getting our email as we travel so please feel free to drop us a note.
	Jim and Bobbie jim [at] wooll.com bobbie [at] wooll.com
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