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.























Wednesday, November 30, 2011

La Belle Florida town dock

We are still anchored med style at the La Belle town dock. The town provides free docking with water and electricity for 3 days.  You then have to leave for 8 days before you can return. Everything is really close including a grocery store, laundry and restaurants. The only draw back is that it is near a bridge so there is quite a bit of traffic noise. There is a library across the street that has free books and cheap books for sale, I will go investigate.
We went to visit our neighbours on their 44 foot DeFever on Monday night for happy hour. Yesterday we had Canadian friends, Bruce and Anne, who are wintering in Fort Myers visit us for lunch at the Log Cabin. The log cabin is famous for it's ribs and pork but we usually go for the fresh fish that is equally nice.  They give you a complimentary soup and ice cream with your meal.  We then walked to an antique and junk shop to try to wear off our lunch.  It was a very nice visit.
We also had friends from Thunder Bay, who leave their boat here over the summer and winter in Cuba every year, drop by and say hello.  They are at Glades Boat Yard getting some boat work done so we will go back to the yard for the week end to visit with them.
I saw an alligator go by this morning and I have often spotted manatee in the past but not yet on this trip.
North Star anchored med style

Drop and set the anchor then back up to the dock to tie the stern
There is a nice little spot called the lollipop on the way to the boat yard so we will anchor there tomorrow, provided it is available.  It is shaped like a lollipop and can only accommodate a couple of boats.
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1 comment:

  1. NinichickDecember 1, 2011 at 9:01 AM

    Do you have any pics of the big boat that's out of the water?

    ReplyDelete

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