North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Barkley Lake

Preparing for the trip

Captain Jerry has been making the final preparations to North Star, our 32 foot Cape Island down east trawler. We are anxious to leave our landlubber lives behind and begin our long awaited journey around the Great Circle. Join us as we travel 10, 000 kilometers: through the historic Trent Severn Waterway; the pristine waters of Georgian Bay; the North Channel of lake Huron; and hop from beach to beach on lake Michigan. We will visit Chicago and begin our trek along the rivers: Illinois; upper Mississippi; Ohio; Cumberland: Tennessee; Tenn-Tom Waterway and the Black Warrior. We will have transited through 68 locks at this juncture. We have chosen the inner route from Mobile Alabama to Tarpon Springs Florida and the shorter Ocheechobee Waterway to reach the East coast of Florida. We will skip over to the Bahamas to wait out the winter before heading North on the Atlantic Inter Coastal Waterway.
The 10 years of researching and planning are finally at an end and we invite you to come along on our adventure.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Barkley Lake

It was foggy this morning and there is talk of more thunderstorms over the next two days so we have decided to stay at Green Turtle Bay Marina for the week. If you stay 5 nights, you get two free so at $1.25 per foot it is a fair deal. The facilities are quite nice and lots of loopers and friendly locals.
We went to the famous Patti's Restaurant with our Australian and Maryland friends. The restaurant is famous for it's two inch pork chop and home made desserts. It was a lovely meal an 1800 type ambiance. They have a shuttle to and from the the marina.
We are doing boat chores and will meet our new friends for a swim at the health club which is part of the marina. Tomorrow the Yatch club on the premises serves dinner and the food is supposed to be quite reasonable and tasty. Since it is a dry county, we bring our own drinks.
There are some really large 100 foot houseboats here as well as other large vessels,little North Star is dwarfed.
Tomorrow we are borrowing the courtesy car again to get propane and other necessities.