Looking for M41

Tonight was partly cloudy but Sirius was visible in the south so I hauled out my trusty 7x35's to see what else I could pick out of the urban glare. Murzim (Beta Sirius) was also visible, along with HR2443 and 2429 at mag 4.4 and 3.9 respectively. A small 'triangle of dim stars was found about halfway to HR2653 (omi2-canis) but nothing resembling M41 was visible. It looks like HR2429 is about halfway along a line drawn from Murzim to M41 so that might be a good strategy for finding it with the 8" dob. I didn't try since there were quite a few low clouds scudding by and the moon was getting high above the house roof so I decided to pack it in for the night. If I put the 'triangle' in the finder's upper left and MR2429 on right side, then M41 should be about centered.
Last night I also downloaded and installed the excellent Virtual Moon Atlas from astrosurf.com. This will be an invaluable resource for identifying various features on the moon, including Wood's Lunar100.
23:30 - clouds have passed for now. I hauled out the 8" and saw #72 on the lunar100 list. This is day 4 past the full moon and the small crater inside Hercules was clearly visible. I used 100x which seemed to work well. The dark halo craters in Atlas were visible as a kind of darker smudge. Atmospheric turbulence and the odd passing cloud made focusing a challenge. I didn't try using a filter this time, maybe next. I also thought I may have got a glimps of M41 just before it got obscured by more clouds. Better luck next time.