North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Orange River

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.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Orange River

We are leaving this morning to go to Bonita Bill's Marina to spend the holiday season. We will have visitors from the boat yard, the Orange River Trailer Park and my daughter from Ontario.

We have had a wonderful time at Cathy and Harold's dock visiting with our friends Bruce and Anne and meeting new friends at the park. They were all Canadians. I am beginning to think I am in Canada.

We took the dinghy and explored the Orange River looking for manatee but only spotted a small alligator. I am glad it was a small one. It is a perfect place for bicycle riding as well as the terrain is flat, the roads are well paved and the traffic is mostly golf carts. The trailer park is between the Orange River, the Caloosahatchee and canals. We shopped and enjoyed the pool since the weather was in the low 90s. We had some fine dinners and met lots of people at happy hour. We hope to see everyone again at Christmas dinner.