North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Welaka

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, March 22, 2012

Welaka

Welaka is famous for its Marine Museum but it is closed because the chap who ran it died. As luck would have it, the antique boat club came to town and they opened the museum just for them. We of course were invited to come along.
There are all kinds of steam powered boats on display as well as other interesting nautical items. They were selling some items and eventually all will be sold once the estate is settled. We got some great buys from an alligator tooth necklace to a pirate for the fly bridge on Hemingway.
The son has a wooden boat building shop that we were also able to visit and talk to builder who is the son of the deceased museum owner. All very interesting. The club stayed for lunch in town then everyone left to go to Astor. The locals tell us they do this every year at this time.
We went out to dinner at Shrimps R US last night. We are getting smarter, we share a meal and then we don't have any left overs. The portions are enormous, we can barely finish a meal even when we share it.
They were having Karaoke night at the Tiki Bar so we went back in the evening for this. There are some good singers out there. I even went up for a couple of songs. We stopped at the Log Cabin Bar and they also had Karaoke on the go. I sang one here also as I was in a good singing mood by then.
The Captain does not sing.
We left Welaka this morning and we are headed to Polatka. We are making the free dock round again.