Congratulations!

Today is your day.

You're off to Great Places!

You're off and away!”

― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You'll Go!

--And so we are off to Great Places.  – The Great Loop

If you live east of the Mississippi you live on an island. The Great Loop circumnavigates that island. It goes up the Intracoastal Waterway from Florida to NJ, up the Hudson River then to either the Erie Canal to the Great Lakes or to Lake Champlain to Canada and the Great Lakes. From the Great Lakes you go to Chicago, down the Mississippi to the Ohio, the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers into the Gulf of Mexico and back to Florida. The trip varies from 5000 to 7000 miles depending on the route you take. You can start anywhere on the loop. You finish when you “cross your wake” where you started.  About 100 boats complete the loop each year.

Mike and I married last May and in August we bought our boat, Easy Pace, a 33 foot 1971 Pacemaker that has already done the Great Loop. George, the previous owner, was kind enough to give us some lessons in boat handling and docking. We spent the fall cruising the Chesapeake getting experience in navigation, docking and boat handling. We learned to call bridges and marinas. We learned to plot our course and follow the compass headings to each buoy. Then – we bought a chart plotter made by Furuno. What a wonderful tool! The trip is so much more relaxing with the chart plotter and GPS that show us exactly where we are. With the fall experience under our belts we put the boat on the hard and headed back to NY for the winter while making our plans for the spring and our Great Loop Adventure.

On April 19^th we left our homeport of North East, MD around noon after launching and provisioning the boat. We thought we were doing a test run but we just kept on going for five hours until we reached the Bay Bridge at Annapolis. There we spent the night before going on to Herrington Harbor Marina in Herring Bay to get the electrical wiring looked at. Easy Pace is an older boat and needs to be brought up to code so she won’t trip circuits at the docks along the way, and more importantly won’t electrocute us. After the electrical survey we decided to have the work done by Herry at BOE Marine on Kent Island. That work will be done after the Rendezvous.

We spent that week remodeling the interior with new carpet, new vinyl floor in the galley, and lots of polishing and cleaning. She shines like she was new and is now a comfortable home for our trip.

Underway again, we spent a night at Solomons Island and then on to two lovely anchorages. Anchoring out is magical, as Mike likes to say. It is so peaceful and you feel in rhythm with nature. Unfortunately, we found a leak in the generator. So until it is repaired, anchoring out means cold cereal or cold sandwiches at mealtime.

We made a quick stop at Deltaville, VA for a part for the generator. What a lovely boat-friendly area! The spot we were told to dock in was along the gas dock between two large boats. It didn’t look to either of us like there was enough room for a boat to fit in between. But Kathy’s docking specialty is pulling into a bulkhead so she gave it a try. We just fit.

Next stop, Norfolk!