Living on Land + Loop Stats

We recently  talked about our perceptions of how often we moved the boat versus staying  in place, so Cathryn sat down and calculated the stats. We were both surprised at the outcome.  Here they are:

Statute Miles Traveled                                     5,177

Days On Cruise                                               237

Days We Moved the Boat                               139  or  59%

Distance Moved, Range                                  1-137 miles

Distance Moved On Typical Day, Range:     20-60 miles

Average Miles On Moved Days                         35

Days We Did Not Move                                   98  or   41%

 

Our time at home is flying by, but it’s not keeping us from missing Next To Me, the warm climate of Mobile and Florida, and our Looper friends. Even so, we’re happy to be seeing our adult kids and their spouse/fiancée, our siblings and in-laws, friends and neighbors, and get a few projects done around the house. We’ve also resumed regular exercise  (something we’ve found hard to do on the boat), mostly running and yoga.

As expected, we’ve been to WAY too many routine medical appointments: dentist, eye doctor, dermatologist and such. But it’s been a year, so we were due.

A nearby yacht club sponsors a Round-Vashon-Island sailing race in late November each year, and we enjoyed watching the fast-moving boats with their huge spinnakers as they passed our house. It looked cold out there, with crew fully swaddled in their foulies to protect from the cold wind.

We had dinner with almost-Loopers Bob and Debi S who live nearby and are shipping their new Loop boat south in a couple of weeks. We’re so excited for them as they finish this wildly crazy preparation phase and move on to the fun part, and we hope to see them in Florida.

We were asked to speak at the last Bremerton Power Squadron meeting and enjoyed describing The Great Loop and an overview of our journey. We’ve been invited to return in the Fall with a full presentation with photos and more stories. As this was where our formal boat training began, we were happy to share our experience and see our Power Squadron friends again.

Just after the photo above was taken, the Genoa sail on this boat blew out, causing quite the scramble onto the foredeck.

The island in the center of this chart is Vashon Island, around which the sailing race circumnavigated.  The boat symbol at the center-left is the approximate location of our house on Colvos Passage on Puget Sound. This screenshot was taken off our Ipad using the new Garmin Blue Charts/Active Captain Navigation App.  If you’re interested in such things, this App is brand new, and Bob thinks it will establish the new standard for computer navigation; check it out.

We’ve gotten more emails, phone calls and text messages from Looper friends telling us of their successful Gulf Crossings, and we know we’ve missed some particularly wonderful and lengthy Crossing weather windows, but there will be more, and we’re still happy to be home for now.

We recently got a status report from Laura and Ross, Looper friends on The Zone, along with a photo of “Next To Me” at the dock at Dog River Marina. So we decided to call Glen, our project manager there,  to inquire as to the status of the list we left for work to be done on our boat. The new air conditioning unit has been ordered, the cracked window has been replaced, and the other window with a small leak has been re-caulked. They assure us the rest will be done before we return. We know many other  Loopers have passed through Dog River in the past 3 weeks, and many of them had work done too, so we know why ours isn’t finished yet: those folks are moving on, while we’re still home, so they are reasonably given higher priority.

Finally, we have time here at home to discuss “What Next After the Loop”?  We haven’t made any decisions, and in fact aren’t even close to a decision, but we’re having fun bouncing ideas around. Any suggestions from our readers?