Pardon me my friends, it has been over 3 weeks since my last blog. Yep, a lot has happened! We spent all of March living on our boat at the home dock of Martin, the salesman who sold us our boat. We cannot thank him and his wife enough for their hospitality. This time gave us an opportunity to get used to living on the boat and learning her systems. Martin is also a licensed captain and he took us out a few times to help us learn to maneuver and dock Off Leash safely. It can be very tricky docking a boat her size, especially if there is wind or current. Large power boats are a totally different beast from the sail boats I am used to. It seems different captains have various preferences for how they like to handle dock lines but the one consistency of docking among all experienced captains is...slow and easy. I can do slow... but it's not yet easy! Our plan is for both Karen and I to learn to handle the boat but, until I feel very comfortable handling the boat, we are concentrating on me driving and Karen handling the lines. She is doing great and handling the lines is far more physical than driving. I cannot say she doesn't panic now and then but, for Karen, that's normal and she bounces out of it quickly.
We also continued to spend a fair amount of time with Alison, keeping her company and helping her with her house and dogs while she was waiting for Dylan to finish his work in Eugene and join her in Florida. And Hooray - he finally got here this week, just in time for us to leave. Karen's brother, Jack, and his wife, Kathy and dog, Twill, joined us on the boat for a few days. It was great having them aboard. Jack is very knowledgeable about boats and was helpful to us in getting the boat ready. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate for us and we were never able to take them out for a cruise on Off Leash but we did at least take a dinghy ride to lunch!.
The Big News.... We finally cast off our lines and started our Great American Loop at 9:29AM on Saturday, April 2, 2022! We were getting antsy to leave and had been waiting for the right weather window. We monitor 4 weather apps and for the whole week they were predicting winds and thunder storms and we would wake up to clear skies and mild winds. So, we finally declared Saturday would be the day. We were up at 6 am to get an early start only to be socked in by fog. So we waited and waited and waited until the fog lifted and made our get away!
We are now 4 days in and so far, so good! Our first day was a 38 mile run from Cape Coral to Port Labelle. On this run we got to experience the first of the hundred plus locks we will transit over the course of the loop. We were pretty nervous about it as this was our first lock but this lock only raised us about 18 inches so it was pretty easy. Labelle is only 12 miles from Alison's house so she and Dylan joined us for the 22 mile 2nd leg up to Moore Haven. Day 3 presented us with the challenge of crossing Lake Okeechobee, the second largest fresh water lake in the US. We had heard plenty of stories about how difficult it can be if the weather gets bad and, like every day, there were potential thunderstorms forecast. Fortunately, the weather cooperated and we had a beautiful, safe and easy crossing. By the time we tied up on the St. Lucie river we had been on the water for 7 hours and traveled 62 miles. But we had fun rocking out to tunes and Karen even got in a little yoga on the bow.
AWW GREAT TO HEAR YOUR JOURNEY HAS BEGUN! LOVE THE VIDEOS TO HELP US ENJOY TRAVELLING WITH YOU GUYS. THANKS FOR SHARING!
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