North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Sanford on Lake Munroe

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, March 14, 2012

Sanford on Lake Munroe

We are at Monroe Harbour Marina in Sanford, our first marina in over a month. We only had to travel 9 miles yesterday from our quiet anchorage but much to our surprise the clocks had moved one hour ahead without us. Good thing I finally looked at my phone.
We did manage to see Manatee at the anchorage. They are so curious, they come right up to the boat to see what we are up to. I could see them feeding on shore and of course we did hear them make their grunting noise at night. We also had a nesting pair of Blue Herons near the boat which I did not see until the last day at the anchorage.
Sanford is a fair size town, Jerry had to find a Napa and West Marine store. He ended up peddling 18 miles to reach each these. I went to do the groceries which was quite a bit closer. The rest of the day was spent doing laundry and chatting with the ladies I was juggling washers and dryers with. There are a lot of folks living on their boats year round here who have jobs. There is only one shower so they must have a hard time with that. Everyone is quite friendly, several boaters came over to introduce themselves and offer to take us to get supplies. Today, Jerry will take one of these kind souls up on the offer, to go get propane.
There is a nice river walk trail here so we will go bike riding along there today. We went to a nice Greek Restaurant last night and had ribs. The portions are outrageous. We have enough for two more meals at least.
We are having a truck come by early tomorrow mornig to fill up our fuel tanks, the price keeps going up daily but we managed to find the cheapest on the river at 3.99/gallon.
We will head out to Blue Springs National Park tomorrow to anchor for a couple of nights. We have gone as far south as is navigable on the St. Johns River. We turn around and start heading north from now until we get home. "Allez les boeufs, le nord est en haut."