Stories about our experiences traveling America’s Great Loop.
The trip from St. Simons Island to Savannah was to be our longest so far. 78 nautical miles over nearly ten hours. It involved some tide swings as well as a very shallow section called Hell Gate. So we got another early start and headed north on a rising tide. It was also our turn to take the lead for the boat convoy, so I had to pay attention. The majority of the day was uneventful except for dodging an…
Mike has researched and prepared to make this adventure amazing. Feeling very blessed for this opportunity. He does a great job writing about the experience, so I will just add some more photos. We walked across the street to the beach a couple of times. Very cool that we were in a marina on the ICW & could walk a short way across to be at the ocean! The garden at Washington Oaks State Park…
Today was supposed to be a difficult travel day because of the types of water we were going to encounter as well as the potential for trouble. First there are the tides. They create currents. There are areas where the sand at the bottom of the waterway has moved, creating shoals. Take a waterway at low tide that has shoals and you can potentially run aground. So we were careful to leave on a rising tide and arrive at our…
St. Augustine was fun, but it is time to press on. We left early once again and enjoyed a very quiet and peaceful ride for most of the day. The landscape in this area was sparse but beautiful. There are miles and miles of marsh grass that is captivating to look at. Our route took us through the entrance to the port of Jacksonville, and fortunately we didn’t see much traffic. We did see some big ships, and we had…
Our plan was to make the short two hour cruise north on the ICW to St. Augustine. In order to arrive during slack tide, we prepared to leave by 11am. This gave us some time to visit the beach one more time and also to shop at the Sunday farmer’s market that was set up next door to the Marina. Weekends are crazy on the water, and we saw all sorts of watercraft and shenanigans. We kept our course steady…
As we begin what we call Phase Two of the great loop, we are changing our pace a little. We will now be visiting places that we want to spend some time exploring, and in some cases we will spend multiple days before moving on. Phase two is more of a time box than a target destination. We have four weeks. So we will see where we are on July 18 and decide what to do at that point. Departing…
Phase One of our Great Loop Adventure is complete. The goal was to simply travel from our home port on the west coast of Florida to a corresponding marina on the east coast of Florida. Our plan was to see how it went and make a decision on how to proceed once we completed this portion of the trip. I can say that phase one was a big success. We both really enjoyed the trip and we learned a lot,…
On the final day of our mad dash around Florida, we eased out of Melbourne Harbor Marina at 6:30am and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise as we continued north. Today we took advantage of the boat’s ability to cruise at a faster speed. We spent several hours cruising along at 14 knots. The fuel economy is the same as when the boat is running at about 9 knots because at the faster speed the boat is planing on top of the…
We spent the night at Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart. This was maybe the second fanciest Marina we have stayed at so far, and definitely the most pricey. Once again we found ourselves a bit intimidated by all the big and fancy boats, but as it turns out the Marina is within walking distance to downtown Stuart, and there is a nice waterfront walking trail that we took advantage of. We planned a long trip for the day, so we…
Lake Okeechobee is the big lake in the lower part of Florida. According to Wikipedia it is the 10th largest freshwater lake in the U.S. But it is also pretty shallow. So we had to follow a channel when crossing through the middle of the lake. The crossing was 26 miles from where we entered the lake at Clewiston, to where we exited the lake at Port Mayaca. We had two more locks to contend with. These lowered us back…