Daydream's Great Loop Blog!

[Pat Anderson]

OK, not an actual Grand Adventure yet, but one in the making!

Planning and preparation are worth blogging too, so here it is...Post #1 on Daydream's Great Loop Blog.

The actual adventure starts around April 1, when we meet Flint and Leslie Firestone on Grace Full to cross the Okeechobee Waterway in Florida! That is when posts on the actual adventure will start, but I will have some more posts on planning, navigation, boat modifications and so forth between now and then. Stay tuned!

 

[Wigeon]

All the best to Pat & Patty on their adventure starting this spring. I know you'll have a wonderful time touring/cruising and meeting friends, old & new. I look forward to your blog & safe travels. Larry

 

[Pat Anderson]

All the best to Pat & Patty on their adventure starting this spring. I know you'll have a wonderful time touring/cruising and meeting friends, old & new. I look forward to your blog & safe travels. Larry

Thanks, Larry - I am having a ball just planning and thinking about this adventure!

 

[El and Bill]

A suggestion - bring along a simple field guide to the birds of the eastern US. The Okeechobee, for starters, is full of great birds in the Springtime, and a knowledge of the birds you will be seeing and 'camping' with will add to the pleasure of your cruise.

 

[South of Heaven]

Pat , are you doing The Loop non-stop?

 

[hardee]

Cool Pat. I will be following along. Thanks for sharing this. Just wondered if you got my PM about the book, "Crossing the Wake" by Tanya Binford, from MCP Books. It is the story of "one woman's great loop adventure. She did the Loop single handing, on a Ranger 25, in about 6 months. Easy, fun read, and educational. It is not a travel log, although it is a chronological account.

Back to your thread, Enjoy the southern heat for now. Colder up this way. Stay safe.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

 

[ddenver]

Really wonderful to see this Pat & Patty. April 1st will be here before we know it. Greatly looking forward to following along w/ your adventures thru your Blog and envying your being able to do this finally.

in the meantime, enjoy the rest of the "winter" suffering thru the extreme cold of Arizona!

Take care and safe travels,
Dan, Tanya, and Hannah on Echo

 

[Pat Anderson]

Pat , are you doing The Loop non-stop?

Yes, we were originally going to start at Apalachicola, but now we are thinking of starting on the Caloosahatchee River so we don't start with a Gulf crossing. But it will be one continuous cruise around!

 

[Pat Anderson]

Cool Pat. I will be following along. Thanks for sharing this. Just wondered if you got my PM about the book, "Crossing the Wake" by Tanya Binford, from MCP Books. It is the story of "one woman's great loop adventure. She did the Loop single handing, on a Ranger 25, in about 6 months. Easy, fun read, and educational. It is not a travel log, although it is a chronological account.

Back to your thread, Enjoy the southern heat for now. Colder up this way. Stay safe.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

Harvey, I just saw the PM this morning! Sorry! I will look at the blog. Dr. Bob gave me a great book, very humorous but also very useful, called "Honey, Let's Get a Boat." Highly recommended!

 

[Pat Anderson]

Really wonderful to see this Pat & Patty. April 1st will be here before we know it. Greatly looking forward to following along w/ your adventures thru your Blog and envying your being able to do this finally.

in the meantime, enjoy the rest of the "winter" suffering thru the extreme cold of Arizona!

Take care and safe travels,
Dan, Tanya, and Hannah on Echo

Thanks, Dan. I have a few posts to do before actually starting the trip, sort of all the preliminaries! Then it may go dark for awhile until we actually get on the water! Hope you enjoy!

 

[Pat Anderson]

A suggestion - bring along a simple field guide to the birds of the eastern US. The Okeechobee, for starters, is full of great birds in the Springtime, and a knowledge of the birds you will be seeing and 'camping' with will add to the pleasure of your cruise.

Sounds like good advice as always, Bill! I am a little more concerned with a field guide to the alligators! I hope Baxter does not get mixed up with one!

 

[hardee]

Cool Pat. I will be following along. Thanks for sharing this. Just wondered if you got my PM about the book, "Crossing the Wake" by Tanya Binford, from MCP Books. It is the story of "one woman's great loop adventure. She did the Loop single handing, on a Ranger 25, in about 6 months. Easy, fun read, and educational. It is not a travel log, although it is a chronological account.

Back to your thread, Enjoy the southern heat for now. Colder up this way. Stay safe.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

Harvey, I just saw the PM this morning! Sorry! I will look at the blog. Dr. Bob gave me a great book, very humorous but also very useful, called "Honey, Let's Get a Boat." Highly recommended!

That on sounds fun. I will see if I can find it.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

 

[ken35216]

Pat , are you doing The Loop non-stop?

Yes, we were originally going to start at Apalachicola, but now we are thinking of starting on the Caloosahatchee River so we don't start with a Gulf crossing. But it will be one continuous cruise around!

From Apalachicola you can cut up the crossing by making a quick jump to St Marks, then down to Steinhatchee, and then to Cedar Key. This is "Old Florida" and very cool not to mention much cheaper than other parts of FL. Shallow draft boats get to see more things than big ass trawlers

 

[El and Bill]

The best advice for folks starting a Great Loop (In our opinion):
TAKE YOUR TIME!!

You will enjoy your cruise and see so much more if you simply SLOW DOWN! See the side channels, circumnavigate NYC, dock at the Statue of Liberty, visit West Point, go up the Potomac a short distance to see Mt. Vernon and the Washington Monument, circumnavigate Long Island, relax on Lake Champlain, visit El's relative Elizabeth CADY Stanton hometown in Seneca Falls, NY as you cruise the Erie Canal, and see the Museum commemorating her experience with Women's Rights,etc. etc.

TAKE YOUR TIME - 5 knots with only one engine down. We have cruised the Loop several times, slowly, and still have more to see on that delightful cruise. The joy is in the day to day, not simply the circumnavigation of those historic and delightful states en route.

 

[journey on]

Ken, the route from Apalachicola down to Cedar Key and back to the protected ICW is a great route, though we went from Pensacola direct to St. Pete. Nevertheless, to cross their wake, P&P will have to come down that way. They just want to do it at the end than the beginning, even though they'll have to drive farther.

BTW, that elbow (or crotch) of Florida is rated as receiving the most lightning strikes in the USA. Maybe coming through there in the Winter. is best.

Boris

 

[El and Bill]

Lightening! You will have warning from weather radio or clouds before the arrival of an electrical storm. Our immediate reaction to an approaching storm -- we either tied at a marina and got off the boat and into a protected place, or if that wasn't possible, we anchored in a cove where sailboats with tall masts were also anchored (advice to us from long-distance cruisers) since lightening usually strikes the tallest conductor and our low boat would not be the best target for an electrical charge from the sky.

 

[Pat Anderson]

Pat , are you doing The Loop non-stop?

Yes, we were originally going to start at Apalachicola, but now we are thinking of starting on the Caloosahatchee River so we don't start with a Gulf crossing. But it will be one continuous cruise around!

From Apalachicola you can cut up the crossing by making a quick jump to St Marks, then down to Steinhatchee, and then to Cedar Key. This is "Old Florida" and very cool not to mention much cheaper than other parts of FL. Shallow draft boats get to see more things than big ass trawlers

We'll just do that at the end of the cruise not the beginning! We are planning on doing the hopscotching routine on the west coast!

I loved this post a few days ago on the AGLCA forum by Katy Nicolai:

Moved to Florida fulltime in 2008 but navigated the Gulf coast before that and found that there is actually no water in the Gulf of Mexico and along Florida's west coast - it's all an optical illusion.

 

[thataway]

Lightning is not that big a problem--but going in the winter does not prevent seeing lightning. Any boat can get hit, including folks on stand up paddle boards. But generally the C Dory is as safe a boat from lightning as any.

There is plenty of water in the Gulf Of Mexico for the C Dory--however, we found a few hard spots with a trawler drawing about 4 feet. The Saint Marks route along the coast, is both interesting, and I believe worthwhile.

Alligators--we have them in the back yard (dormant in the winter up in Pensacola)--not an issue--just use a bit of common sense.

We will be reading every word of your blog.

 

[JamesTXSD]

It was 10 years ago about now that we hauled Wild Blue from south Texas to south Florida, to spend the winter aboard. Lightning? Yeah, we saw it now and then; like Bill's advice, we made it a point to not be the tallest point near us.

Alligators? Sure. Don't poke at 'em. Keep a close watch on the fur babies...



Florida is a good place to start - the cruising in FL, while completely different from the PNW, is still very interesting. You could easily spend months cruising south Florida and not see it all. The city "canyons" can be just as interesting as (though completely different from) Lake Powell...



Enjoy your time doing the loop. Schedules and "definite" are a good thing to leave behind. Let the season be a guide for your timing.

Have fun!

Jim

 

[jritsema]

Pat and Patty,
You are probably already aware, but if not you may find the blog and book done by Derrek Baan very interesting. He and his crewmate Daveen just completed the GL in 2016. These are 2 Aussies that my wife Beth and I had the pleasure of accompanying for 4 days on the east coast of Lake Michigan. Derrick chronicles their adventure in a C-Dory 25 in the about the same amount of time you have allotted and likely the same float plan. He did submit a few posts on C-Brats a few months ago.

His book is available in hard copy or Kindle at this website:

https://www.amazon.com/Derrick-Baan/e/B ... sr=1-2-ent

He also did an excellent blog that you may want to reference, the link is here:

https://balakera.com/2016/03/page/4/

If you begin the trip blog in March 2016 in the Archive section, you will follow it forward from there. I would recommend at least getting the Kindle version for easy and enjoyable reference.
I look forward to following your blog- maybe we can meet along the way when you get north in a few months.

Best wishes,
Jeff Ritsema