North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Orange River, Fort Myers, Florida

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, December 6, 2011

Orange River, Fort Myers, Florida

We are tied up to a dock in a trailer park on the Orange River. Our friends Bruce and Anne's friends, Cathy and Harold, kindly lend out their dock to fellow loopers periodically. They completed the loop some years ago and are now wintering in their double wide trailer in Fort Myers on a canal off the Orange River. It is a lovely spot with neatly landscape properties and a very nice clean neighbourhood. Harold even met us on the Caloosahatchee River to escort us in to his dock. Thank you Harold and Cathy.

We had a relaxing afternoon at Bruce and Ann's trailer yesterday and completed the day with a Bar B Que dinner. Today we are going shopping at some man stores. Harbor Freight for tools and you guessed it West Marine. There is a huge food only Wall Mart next to Harbor Freight so I am all set also.

we really like the Caloosahatchee River. The shoreline is dotted with farms where cows and horses are grazing, we even saw a camel watching over the cows. There are mansions and more modest homes and orange orchards. I really like the trees that have Spanish moss draped on their branches as well as some of the different types of coniferous trees.

The weather is great, the company is entertaining, life is good.