April 7 Islamorada

In preparation  for our departure we drove our rental up to Key Largo to try and sell a few surplus items to a Marine resale store, including two stern lights and a homemade dingy seat. The owner gave us $20 for the lights (who knew?) but apologized that he wasn’t interested  in the dingy seat. But a customer loved it for a dingy he just fixed up for his 12 year old, so it found a new home!

We shopped at Kmart and Publix and headed back to unload it all. Dirk has a habit of putting his reading glass in the neck of his shirt and forgot they were there as he leaned over to put the groceries on the deck. As I walked up to the boat I saw a small splash – “it’s a fish” said Dirk. Nope – his glasses sank in what turns out to be about 10 feet of water. He tried to find them with snorkeling gear – no luck. But did come out with a nasty rash – sea lice we are told. Fun!

A boat neighbor came by and suggested we use a fishing net to semi-scrape the bottom at low tide in the morning. So around 8 am Dirk rigged up a net, that just happened to be on board, with a long handle (a random PCV pipe on board) and got his glasses off the bottom on his second try! Neighbor was amazed and we were too.

And here’s the boat with it’s new name and sundeck cover finally installed.

Wednesday, April 5

We flew to Florida on one way (!) tickets this time. We are here to finish preparations for the trip and get ourselves trained to pilot and manage our boat. There are still boat issues to be addressed as well.

But we are making progress! We got out on the bay yesterday. It was windy and there were waves so I took a Bromine and soon fell asleep!  I woke up when we were heading into the marina and Dirk practiced maneuvering and docking the boat a bunch of times. Backing in! He did it too – by himself (with Captain Russ there the whole time just in case).

Last night we had dinner with our friend Donna – who just happened to be here for about a week. We took a selfie at sunset at Mile88.

Today Dirk put our new  boat name on the boat and I was lining drawers, trying to declutter and find places for everything. It hot so we turned on the AC finally. I’ve been avoiding it until now.  Later Donna took us out into the bay on a zippy skiff and we traveled on some of the waterway we will be using to head north to Miami soon. She also showed us Toilet Seat Alley – a very classy section of the bay off Islamorada.  It’s shallow channel lined with toilets seat containing all kinds of messages. It of course contains one celebrating her and Carl’s wedding a few years ago, placed there by their friend Tom.

We had dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant within walking distance of the marina, and came back to find a puddle of water on the floor below the air conditioner vent in the salon. So we have a new mystery – Why is this happening (besides the fact that we bought a boat I mean!)?  We removed the AC vent and part of the wall and looked at the air conditioning unit and pan and can’t see a leak.  We have a borrowed fan to help dry out the floor.

Wikipedia: “The Great Loop is a system of waterways that encompasses the eastern portion of the United States and part of Canada. It is made up of both natural and man-made waterways, including the Atlantic and Gulf Intracoastal Waterways, the Great Lakes, the Rideau Canal, and the Mississippi and Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.^[1] The entire loop is approximately 6,000 miles long. ”

We will be circling counter clockwise, and skip the lower Mississippi and the Louisiana and Texas sections of the Intracostal waterway. For the most part we will be inland from the ocean and visiting towns and seeing sites along the way.  We haven’t fully planned the route we will take yet, and don’t have a schedule yet either. But the map below has a good overview of our options. We are starting in lower Florida, along the skinny black line that indicates the Keys, so we have a ways to go to enjoy summer in New York, Canada, and the Great Lakes!

The map is provide by the AGLCA – America’s Great Loop Cruiser Association. We learned about the group which supports all of us crazy people traveling the great loop around eastern US and Canada, and joined. Members put a burgee (flag/banner) on their boat and make it easy to find “friends” along the way.  We have the white one. When we complete the loop we can fly the “gold” burgee, and if we do it more than once, the platinum flag!  The web site also has a valuable forum and all sorts of information which helps us all maneuver the Great Loop.

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March 16, 2017 Islamorada, FL

We considered and visited many trawlers (a type of cruising boat) for our journey and decided on this Double Cabin Mainship 40 since it had the most “must haves” of all the trawlers and motor yachts we looked at. It has a large master cabin,  galley with natural light,  diesel engines in good condition and includes a sundeck as well as a flybridge. We actually were tracking about 25 different criteria, very logical, and it came down to what felt best in the end! Currently we are having some issues addressed that were identified during the inspection (called a survey).

There were cosmetic issues on the fly bridge requiring new cushions and backrests and replacing rotting wood below the upper helm.  And then mechanical problems requiring a repairs to the windlass motor, new water pump, fixes to the vacuum pump toilets, replacing an alternator, and some work on the engines and generator. Nothing major, but it will all add up.

We are taking about a month to prepare to begin our Great Loop adventure while traveling back and forth from here, to our home in Stow, Ma to Lantana, Fl where my daughter Sarah, son-in-law Chris and wonderful grandson Arden live. The relatively small and wonderful marina has a number of manatee visitors. One was lying on its back for a while, drinking from the boat’s air conditioning outlet while we were flushing in out.