What an awesome day on the water! Lake Okeechobee is huge. We left Roland Martin Marina late (~8am). All the fishermen were gone well before day light. Motoring carefully across this shallow (~8-10′) lake took a couple of hours but it was beautiful. Then we were back in the St Lucie Canal headed toward Stuart. We passed our new sailboat friends (Matt and Joyce Gauthier) about the middle of the lake and exchanged some boat pics. After another near perfect docking, we are in walking distance of the last lock and staying at yet another Park (National Park this time), we’re settled in for the night (w/firewood and a fire pit + clean showers and restrooms) just 60 yards from the boat!!!! Winning. (here’s some pics along the way… note the nice homes along the canal and Mary doing exercises on-board)

Lets catch up with a quick time log, after living aboard for the month of January, we left our home port in Bradenton on Feb. 1st to attend a “Looper Gathering” at Apollo Beach. The next day we left for Sarasota Bay and stayed at Marina Jack for almost 2 weeks (sometimes in a slip and sometimes on a mooring ball) while finishing up local tasks that included church activities, a prop repair, and getting mom ready to move back to Tennessee. On Feb. 13th we stayed at Crow’s Nest Marina in Venice FL, then on Valentines Day we motored to Punta Gorda (Burnt Store Marina). On Saturday Feb. 15th we got a slip at the Ft Myers Yacht Basin on the Caloosahatchee River just in time to visit the Edision \ Ford Winter Estates and catch an awesome parade. After church on Sunday Feb. 16th we were on our way again up the Caloosahatcee River into the Okeechobee Waterway (getting our first experience with locks). We stayed two nights in the lovely town of LeBelle FL at their City Dock where we met several new boater friends.

Today was the official start of the Great Loop — we got our prop repaired after a week of waiting, and set out from Sarasota Bay to Venice, Florida. We had a great run up the inter-coastal waterway today. We did one bridge raising, and one swinging bridge opening. The Bridge raise was in a no wake zone and we were trying to hurry to get through the bridge. People on the bank shouted out to us to let us know that we were going too fast and needed to slow down — which we promptly did… The Blackburn Bridge is Sarasota county’s only swinging bridge. There is only 9 foot clearance under the bridge, and we need 19.5 feet. The bridge tender has to walk out to the middle of the swing bridge to operate it. We took a video of the swing bridge and will post it sometime later.

We got to Venice at our overnight docking at Crows Nest Marina. They have a great restaurant here, and it is very popular with the locals, however we opted to grill out hamburgers on our new grill which is awesome. Just before sunset we borrowed complementary bicycles for a 7.5 mile round trip ride to the a local produce market. The trip included riding by Venice Beach, several parks, the historical district and a draw bridge, see a few photos below.

• 

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is our first post on this new blog. We’re just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when we post new updates. Click here to learn about America’s Great Loop

Larry and Mary have started the grand adventure, America’s Great Loop. As we traveled the 6,000 mile journey, we started a blog to share our adventure with others, and now that has become this published journal as a record of the trip highlights.

Some background….Originally from Tennessee (Larry) and Nevada (Mary), we now call Florida home. However for the next several months we will be calling the ICW (Inter Costal Waterway) our home as we spend our days aboard “Living the Dream”.

We are both retired Mechanical Engineers and now full time sailors. We have 4 grown children, 1 grand child and 2 more grand children due this summer.