More of the Same

Days on cruise:  312

At the risk of boring you to death, we’ll continue to post  messages about our preparations for the Sea Trial/Survey and evening social life. This is what it’s like AFTER the Loop, when getting ready to sell a boat.

Tuesday and Wednesday were full of more minor repairs on Dave’s part (our brilliant Marine Tech), and cleaning, sorting and packing on our parts. Bob and Dave tested the window repair job by trying their darned-est to get it to leak, using  high water pressure from a hose to blast the window from all directions, simulating a wind-driven rain. Woo hoo – no leaks! Nice to have success!

Friends Allyn and Mark on “Second Wind”, who we met in Sanibel a month ago, only a week after they began their Loop, arrived in Fort Pierce Wednesday afternoon and tied up across the river at the municipal marina.

Cathryn and Allyn did another of their join-effort potluck dinners (crockpot pork roast cooked in apple juice and peanut butter, plus edamame from Cathryn; salad, quinoa with mushrooms and home-made applesauce from Allyn), and the four of us convened on Second Wind for a lingering meal and good conversation.

It’s less than a week until the Sea Trial/Survey, and we’re feeling like it will be no problem to be ready. So we’re planning one last “anchor out” night this weekend, if the weather cooperates.

More Goodbyes

Days on cruise:  310

Craig and Barbara on “Blue Heron” spent a third, final night in Fort Pierce and visited the Navy Seals Museum, so we went out for a final dinner at Chuck’s, a nice waterfront restaurant across the street from our marina. We had an outside table on the deck, and this is where we ate our very first dinner in Fort Pierce more than a year ago, the day we completed our 4,000+ mile drive from Seattle. We were thrilled with the beautiful setting, warm breeze, shore birds and sunset last year, and again this year.

Hmm . . . honestly we’re not one of those couples who wears matching outfits. I had on black slacks, tan ones for Bob. We hated to say goodbye to Craig, Barbara and their lovable yellow labs Joey and Bailey too, after Cathryn went to their boat for one last “play date” with the pups.

The next day Dave returned to tackle a few more boat projects, and the plan to re-caulk inside the master stateroom window that has recently leaked a few drops in heavy, wind-driven rain turned into more. After further assessment, Dave ended up entirely removing the window, scraping away the old adhesive and sealer, applying new stuff, re-seating and sealing all the screws that hold it in place, then re-installing the window. Coincidentally our boat broker dropped by while this was going on (showing other clients a boat here) and said “What are you doing to the boat??? I’m supposed to sell it to Jack and Sara next week and you’re busy tearing it apart?”  We promised it would be in better shape as a result.

Fellow Gulf Crossing buddies Paul and John (father and son, plus their rescue cat Sparta) on “Memsahib” are in Vero Beach this week and invited us to join them for the evening. The last time we saw them was in Marathon when we had Seattle friends Jim and Phebe visiting too.

We had a glass of wine on Memsahib, then went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. It was great to see them again, and we’ll follow the rest of their Loop on their blog.

We’re counting down the remaining number of sunsets to enjoy, as soon we’ll be back on the “Left Coast” of the United States, in an east-facing house. We don’t see sunsets there unless we go to west-facing Seattle to visit our kids or other friends.

Sorting and packing up the boat is going so smoothly that we’ll probably be ready to depart for home on March 30.

Working Hard, Playing Hard

Days on cruise:  309

Some might say the title of this post reflects exactly what we’ve been doing for the past year, and that would be true. But the focus has shifted to preparing the boat for sale, and saying goodbye to Looper friends, so nothing like actually doing the Loop, really. We’re not traveling, and not seeing new and interesting places every day. And we’re seeing lots of relatively new, but very dear friends (Looper friends), but not meeting new people anymore.

Carolyn and Susan, friends on “Sojourner” who completed their Loop last Fall, have put her in storage in Stuart for the summer hurricane season yet to come and are driving home to Lexington, KY. Their route takes them past Fort Pierce, so we drove to a restaurant by freeway and met them for breakfast. We’ve been invited to Lexington in October to go to the horse races together, and we just might take them up on the offer of a visit!

Below is their beautiful 36’ Selene, back in the days when we were at Bobby’s Fish Camp and running part of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway together.

Next up, Craig and Barbara on “Blue Heron” arrived in Fort Pierce and are docked at the Municipal Marina across the river from us. They invited us to their boat for cocktails, including very fine wine and appetizers to celebrate the completion of our Loop! We first met them in Norfolk last May, seemingly a lifetime ago. We’re sorry we won’t be in Norfolk this May to catch their lines as they cross their wake.

Last night Craig and Barbara came aboard Next To Me for dinner (and brought more wonderful wine), and we sat up long after the solar lights on the sundeck came on, sharing Loop stories, talking about our families, and discussing possible future adventures, together and separately.

Last week we were in touch with Bob and Debi, neighbors from back home (20 miles away makes you neighbors when we’re across the country, right?) They bought their Loop boat at home in November, we attended In My Element’s christening in December while home for the holidays, and they shipped her to Dog River Marina in Mobile, AL to begin their Loop. After final out-fitting and provisioning, they began their Loop and were in Carabelle awaiting a suitable weather window to make their Big Gulf Crossing.

We were their designated “Float Plan” contacts, which means we were the folks who were to call the Coast Guard if they didn’t arrive on the far side of their journey within a certain timeframe. A Float Plan is pretty much the same thing as a Flight Plan for an airplane, providing the specific planned travel route, identifying information for the boat and crew, emergency contacts, and lots more.

They were making the overnight crossing alone, as the primary Gulf Crossing season is over for most Loopers. They left Carabelle at 2:30 Friday afternoon, arriving in Tarpon Springs  mid-day Saturday. We both slept well that night despite knowing they were “out there”, but Cathryn did awake hourly for 2 minutes to mentally “will them across the Gulf”, which no doubt contributed greatly to their successful completion, HA! We’re hoping they’ll make it this coast of Florida before we leave so we can see each other one time on their Loop.

Winding Down

Days on cruise:  307

We’re not cruising anymore, though we do hope to get away from the dock for one last night at anchor, but we’ll continue the formatting convention we’ve used all year, as we’re still living on the boat full-time.

First, thank you so much to all our family members, friends and blog readers who sent congratulatory messages on our Loop completion! It made us feel all warm and fuzzy, contributed to our celebratory mood, and we so enjoyed having people “traveling along with us” in this manner.

Things are a whirlwind now that we’re settled in our slip at Harbour Isle Marina in Fort Pierce. Dave Arnold (above), the wonderful Marine Technician who did lots of repairs and upgrades on Next To Me a year ago to prepare her for our Loop, is back on board again. This time he’s making a few minor repairs to get her ready for our buyer’s Survey and Sea Trial less than two weeks from now. It’s good to see Dave again. He’s a brilliant guy who knows everything there is to know about all boat systems.

We heard a knock on the hull yesterday, and there stood Jay and Lori from “Branchin’ Out”, Loopers we met in  November, and with whom we traveled a section of the Tennessee-Tombigbee River (3-4 days including Bobby’s Fish Camp) to Fairhope, Alabama. See their beautiful boat below, still sporting fenders for going through locks, at the time.

We hadn’t seen them since November, and they happened to be in Florida on business, read on our blog that we’d completed our Loop, so stopped by briefly. It was great to visit with them again!

Bob spent Wednesday and Thursday sorting a bunch of boat equipment to separate items into piles of things to stay on board, and those items to go home with us. He also scrubbed the sundeck roof, water proofed the canvas, and lowered the dinghy to the dock so he could thoroughly clean it too.

Cathryn sorted through linens and bedding, provisions in the galley, and the pantry and bathroom cabinets to begin packing things into bins for loading on the truck.

We have three meals scheduled with Looper friends this weekend, as the stream of Loopers continuing their boat journeys makes their way through this stretch in the coming weeks. They’re all headed north, and these will be our last goodbyes.

We’re Looped!

Days on cruise:  304
Distance traveled: 51.4 miles
Travel time: 7 hours, 26 minutes
Total/FINAL trip odometer:  6,282 statute miles
We did it! Today we pulled into Harbour Isle Marina in Fort Pierce, Florida, where we began our Loop 11 1/2 months ago, departing on March 23, 2012 and returning March 12, 2013. What a journey it’s been!

The wind was howling in North Palm Beach when we woke up, but calmed quite a bit by the time we slipped our lines and pulled away for our last days’ travel. We drove more slowly than usual to savor the journey. The emotions of such a day, at least for us, were already quite complicated, but Cathryn also got a sad phone call from a close friend whose husband is dying of cancer (still in his 50s) which poignantly reminds us how important it is to seize the day and follow our dreams while we have time, as none of us knows when our time will be up.

Through our entire Loop, we’ve never been stopped by any law enforcement officials, but today in the rain, only 40 minutes from The End, the Coast Guard pulled up behind us with blue lights flashing and asked when we were last boarded! We couldn’t believe it. Fortunately we had the Coast Guard Auxiliary conduct a Vessel Safety Check on Next To Me when we were in Fort Myers last month, so Bob pointed to our 2013 Vessel Safety Check sticker in the window, and the friendly CG officials (8 of them on board) told us to have a good day and moved on to find someone else to board. We thanked them for the important work they do and said goodbye.

At 3pm as we pulled within sight of Harbour Isle, we saw Wind Song (below) anchored out near the harbor entrance. Friends Jerry and Janet were the first Loopers we met after beginning our Loop, at Thunderbolt Marina in Savannah, Georgia, and they came to celebrate with us. They finished their Loop six months ago and are now headed north to do the Downeast Loop in Maine, Nova Scotia and Quebec this summer.

Pulling into a marina for the last time . . . .

A familiar place, as we lived here full-time for 2 1/2 months after buying Next To Me while getting her ready to Loop.

We were met at the dock by Chris and Alyse Caldwell of Captain Chris Yacht Services who trained us for 3 days in January 2012 and have become good friends. They just dropped off clients after 5 days of training on their boat, so were here to catch our lines and document our arrival. Malcolm, the dockmaster here who also stored our pickup truck at his house for the past year, also came.

Chris and Alyse  gave us leis and hugs after securing our lines, and we changed out our white “In Progress” Looper burgee for the gold “Loop Completed” burgee!

Janet and Jerry had come by dinghy from their anchorage and joined the festivities.

Alyse lit sparklers . . .

. . . and Jerry popped the cork on a bottle of champagne they’d brought for the occasion. It sure felt like a festive and happy time to us, and we were happy to have such wonderful folks with whom to celebrate.

Alyse brought dinner aboard, and the six of us ate on the sundeck, shared stories and plans, and talked until long after the solar-powered rope lights came on. It was a memorable evening to top off a memorable journey.
We’ll put up a “Reflections on the Journey” post in a few days, but meanwhile we’ll begin to prepare the boat for sale. Our wonderful boat broker Curtis Stokes brought us a Purchase and Sale Agreement from terrific future Loopers Jack and Sara, and they’ll conduct a sea trial and survey March 26, then prepare Next To Me, to be re-named Ithaka (Google the name to read the aptly-named poem) for her second Great Loop journey in 2014.
We bet we’ll sleep well tonight. Sweet dreams!

Getting Close

Days on cruise:  303

Distance traveled:  53.4 miles

Travel time: 7 hours, 56 minutes

Total trip odometer:  6,231 statute miles

We got an early start this morning because we were tied to a river wall between two bridges in Fort Lauderdale, it was unclear whether we could fit under the bridge without asking for an opening, and the bridge WILL NOT open during rush hour. So just after first light, at 7:15 a.m. we slipped our lines. We were unhappy to learn the unusual high tide today, combined with a swift current in the river, plus a NARROW space in which to turn the boat around 180 degrees, AND high winds blowing us askew, made the getaway a precarious, heart-pounding event in which our boat came closer than we were happy about to several other large, expensive boats before control was re-gained and we cleared beneath the bridge. Whew, not our favorite way to start the day! We prefer caffeine rushes to adrenaline rushes at 7:15 a.m.

The sky was cloudy, even sort of stormy looking as we pulled out of New River and into the ICW, with the wind blowing 15 knots and a Small Craft Advisory.

We spent the day traveling “The Ditch”, a long, mostly narrow ICW path from Fort Lauderdale to Palm Beach. Multi-million dollar 100+ foot boats continued to line the shore, along with many-multi-thousand square-foot houses costing many millions of dollars. The opulence is hard to absorb or believe. Where do these people, so many of them, get SO much money???

There are boats with helicopters on the sundeck where we stow our dinghy. There are lots of boats that make ours LOOK LIKE a dinghy.

We remain confused about one matter. Last year just before we started our Loop, we took a shake-down cruise to the Keys. Our “bread crumb” track (think Hansel and Gretel) is still there on our Chart plotter, only this year it looks like we spent much of that journey traveling WAY up on land, missing lots of marks! It’s not unheard of for a GPS or Chartplotter to show you on land when you’re not, but sometimes this track is SO far off-base that we know it can’t possibly we reflect what we actually did last year. So is there something related to which satellites you’re connected to any point in time that show your track differently, or what??? See the dashed lines below showing our old track?

This modern house below stands out, in that it’s very different in style from the thousands of humongous Venetian-style homes with columns and arches which are always painted a pale yellow-golden color.

This one is typical in style and size, but unique by being blue.

What’s the message here: 1960s hippies turned millionaires?

We lost count of how many bridges we passed beneath today, but we had to ask for an opening from ELEVEN of them! Mostly they open every half hour, and mostly we arrived within 10 minutes of their scheduled opening, but sometimes we had to wait longer and hold our boat in place against both the current and the high wind, no mean feat. By the end, it felt like an arduous travel day, when combined with “Idle Speed, No Wake” and “Slow Speed, Minimum Wake” manatee protection zones. We actually saw two manatees today, so that made all that hassle feel a little more worthwhile! Alas, no photos of manatees as they’re elusive.

This wreck of a house seems an unlikely candidate for salvage by moving to a new location on a barge.

After 8 hours of travel, we pulled into the beautiful Old Port Cove Marina in North Palm Beach and tied up for the night. Bob is calm and mellow as always, while Cathryn is on an emotional roller coaster over our impending Loop completion tomorrow. She even called her parents tonight to discuss it and cried a little bit. She’s both homesick and ready to go back to life in Seattle AND sad about leaving the Loop, as a stranger on the Tennessee River in October warned her she would be.

Fort Lauderdale

Days on cruise:  302

Distance traveled:  9.4 miles

Travel time:  1 hour, 21 minutes

Total trip odometer: 6,177 statute miles

Daylight Savings Time last night meant we got up late, and we hadn’t jogged for a few days, so took time for that too. It was after noon before we slipped our lines at Loggerhead Marina in Hollywood, then pulled into the ICW to continue north. Being a sunny Sunday, boat traffic was extremely busy again.

This stretch of the ICW was frequently lined with outdoor cafes and restaurants on the wall. Frequent “Idle Speed, No Wake” and “Slow Speed, Minimum Wake” Zones to protect manatees, plus bridges that open only on the half hour, meant we made slow progress.

Entering Fort Lauderdale, we traveled through the Cruise Ship port where a crowd of behemoth cruise ships was berthed. Security was tight with Coast Guard and Sherriff’s Office boats cruising back and forth.

Even 100-foot long boats look small compared to the one above, and dozens of those we saw of this size were registered in Georgetown, Cayman Islands.

Mid-afternoon we turned north up the New River and traveled 1.5 miles on its’ beautiful winding, narrow, densely developed route to a Fort Lauderdale municipal marina with side-ties on the River Walk wall.

It’s an extremely busy location with slips lining the wall on both sides of the river between two bridges, each of which has 19-foot clearance at high tide. We were just able to sneak under without having to ask for an opening.  This view below looks north at the second of the two pink bridges in this quarter mile marina stretch.

Water taxis and zillions of recreational boats plied the waterway all afternoon.

At 5:00 our niece Laura (daughter of Bob’s sister Lynn) who lives in Fort Lauderdale arrived at our boat. We last saw her here a year ago when we stopped for a visit on our shake-down cruise to the Keys just before we began our Loop. Laura took us to a favorite place for locals, The Floridian, for dinner on Las Olas. We had a great time catching up with  her and were happy she had time to see us.

Why Do We Always Do This On Weekends??

Days on cruise:  301

Distance traveled: 61.5 miles

Travel time: 7 hours, 30 minutes

Total trip odometer:  6,168 statute miles

We woke early, as did Looper friends Mark and Allyn on Second Wind, so at 7:30 we both cast off our lines and headed north. We anticipated and were ready for more very shallow water through a few Sounds, and found it easier than yesterday, partly because it was high tide and there were no crab pots. (Note: Allyn was claiming credit for having snuck out in their dinghy last night and cut all the crab pot lines to make them disappear. How gullible are we?)

We wound our way through mangrove cuts, wide open shallow places, and finally into Biscayne Bay, the largest waterway shown above, with water mostly 9-15 feet deep. The wind was blowing, so we sometimes had whitecaps and 2-3 foot waves on the bow, but other times it was calmer with little wind, tiny waves, and best of all: no wallowing in winds on the beam!

The approach to Miami was a bit of shock as we haven’t been in a big city since Chicago last September. The smog and dense, high rise development looked so foreign! A large group of sailors was out racing today, and their spinnakers were beautiful!

There was no question today about taking the “inside” route versus the “outside” route, as the Atlantic promised only rough weather, big waves and high wind. That meant we had to contend with heavy boat traffic (especially on a weekend), bridge openings because we’re too tall to get under lots of bridges between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and crazy boat drivers who don’t understand the rules of boating.

Lots of boats flew along at high speed without regard for the impact of their wake on others. They must not know they are legally liable for any damage their wake causes, and we’ve heard stories of people thrown out of small fishing boats by such actions.

Weekend boaters enjoy partying on sand bars along the ICW, and boat traffic is very heavy in this stretch. Looks like great fun!

High-rise condos line the ICW for mile after mile.

Gargantuan boats are parked along the ICW too. Where are the windows on this one????

And of course we passed the Port of Miami docks where cruise ships tie up, looking like skyscrapers! Navigating our way through all of this got to be a little stressful, even though we’ve done it before, a year ago on our shake-down cruise before beginning our Loop.

Today we only had to have 3 bridges opened for us, but we have lots more between here and our end point 3 days from now.

Below is Second Wind, our friends Mark and Allyn who are from Boston and began their Loop in Bradenton Beach, Florida a few weeks ago. We traveled with them most of today, but at Miami they peeled off to stay at a marina where their sons and grandson will join them for a visit.

Para-sailors, jet skis, stand up paddle boarders: you name it, it’s all here in Miami!

And of course there’s mile after mile of enormous, opulent homes lining the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW) for more than a hundred miles, past Fort Lauderdale.

We planned, again, to anchor out tonight, but it was so windy and the anchorage we’d chosen had no protection from the current wind direction, so we went to a marina in Hollywood, FL and are still rocking and rolling in heavy wind and fast moving current that not only made docking a challenge, but led to our request to move to another more protected slip after we tied up at our first assigned slip.

We’re feeling the end of our great adventure approaching, and Cathryn is starting to feel emotions around that.