Captain's Blog

  TRAVEL DAY 3 - Venice to Cabbage Key February 18, 2023 4.54 Hours/37.2 Miles     After three nights in Venice, we awoke to the pop, pop, pop of Pistol Shrimp. The tide was dead low and the keel was intermittently scraping the bottom. The sailboat 2 slips down was laying hard to it's port side. I made a pot of coffee, checked email and started to prepare for the days travel.   Sunrise Venice, FL     Though we've been by Cabbage Key before, we have never stopped.  We pulled out of the slip at 9:24 am and slid up to the fuel dock to grab a small amount of dinghy fuel, a couple bags of ice and pump out. The wind was stiff out of the North but pushed us perfect to the dock.  Heading South     Cabbage Key is a small island north and west of Fort Myers and only reachable by boat. Built on an old Calusa Indian mound and one of the highest points around. It was reportedly the inspiration for Jimmy Buffett's "Cheeseburger in Paradise" and I...

TRAVEL DAY 1 - Palmetto to Sarasota February 14, 2023 4.2 Hours/31.6 Miles     Today is "really" the day we start of the Great Loop, as opposed to the "Unofficial Start of the Great Loop" . We felt pretty confident that all the preparation and work would pay off . Well, feelings are one thing, realty is another.     We pulled out of our slip and headed for the fuel dock to top off the tanks with a few gallons of diesel and pump out the holding tank. Of course the predicted wind was not what we got, neither was the air temperature, still it was a decent day for a cruise. We're still in our home waters so we basically knew the way. Our destination was Sarasota and a free anchorage. We had planned to pick up an anchor ball at Marina Jack's but it was full. Free anchorages mean more money for food, snacks and drinks! Out of the Manatee River and around Ana Marie Island     Beth had planned some routes on her Navionics and Aqua Maps apps and was ready to assume ...

   The build up was huge, the anticipation was killing us. Now we're here, living on the boat in Bradenton, FL for the next 14 days before we "shove off". With everything we think we will need for the trip in the back of our car, we load it onto the boat. Where in the heck are we going to put all of this stuff? Organizing and storing in every nook & cranny, sorting and reprioritizing. Re-looking at something and saying, "Do we really need 3 of these?" "Put it back in the car." After two full days, Beth managed to get it all labeled and packed away, somewhere. This little boat has a lot more storage space than we thought. Now, to be able to find it when we want it. I looked for my work gloves for 20 minutes!  "Where is all this stuff going to fit?"     Meanwhile I'm doing the same for all of my tools and gear, gallons of oil, fluids and filters, spare parts and odd things that we just might need to get us out of a pinch.  A few last mi...

The book that started it all      I have been staring at the countdown clock in my office for about 2 years now. The countdown started in my head in 2007 when a friend of mine gave me a book entitled  "Honey, Let's Get a Boat"     It's  a very entertaining book about [by] Ron and Eva Stob published in 1999. With virtually no long range boating/cruising experience, they set out to complete the 6000+ mile journey in a 40' trawler.      Even though the Great Loop was reportedly first done by 18 year old Ken Ransom and three of his high school buddies in 1899 in a hand made 30' wood sailboat, and again in 1906 by a boat builder Scott Mathews and his family, this book was arguably the tale that started it all.     I thought, "We could do that". We talked about it for years, trying to decide how we would be able to do this with our two youngest daughter, a dog, a cat and all the other things that tether us to land and one locati...

     Vacuum Gauge      As our time left for departure is coming to an end, so is the time for any last-minute projects. There really isn't much more I can do. But one very simple project but pretty important has to do with one of the most likely engine failure issues. Fuel, more specifically, fuel filtering.      I blogged about this in  The Importance of Clean Fuel  when I was going over the engine early on. I now wanted to take it one step further. With a single engine, clean fuel is even more important. If an engine is going to fail, you can be sure it will happen at the most inopportune time, like in rough seas or during docking. I wanted one more level of security.      You cannot always tell if a fuel filter is ready to change just by looking at it or by the amount of time it has been installed. The surest way is with a vacuum gauge. Installing this gauge should pay for itself by not wasting money replacing filt...

  Well after 22 years, the Acrylic windscreen on the flybridge broke. Of course dropping the Bimini top on it didn't help! Smooth move. I read on the Camano Facebook Group where others had them replaced and at a cost of $800, although a fair price for custom work, I felt I could get the same results for less. Being an old "Shop Teacher" from the 80's, we used Acrylic frequently and always fabricated it by hand. The techniques are a little different but most of the same tools are used.  Materials. I secured a sheet of 1/4" Acrylic. 1/4" Acrylic is really .220 thick. I couldn't get Smoke colored but did get a Gray color #XA-2064 from RS Supply in Port Richie, Florida.  A tool I didn't have was the special Acrylic Point Drill Bits. You cannot use a standard wood twist bit, as they tend to "grab" the material as the bit passes through and most of the time will crack the Acrylic.  Step 1: I labeled each piece with "BOW OUT" and "...