Terry
08/15/2008, Hessel Michigan

This is an 18 foot skiff. We owned a 22' version of this when I was about 11 years old. It is one of the boats we refurbished.

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Terry
08/15/2008, ICW NC/VA

This is May when we transited the Great Dismal Swamp. This swamp was owned in part by George Washinington and in order to log the cypress they engaged slaves who hand dug this canal over 20 miles long to float the logs. It became a main comercial shipping route but now is a historic route and used by pleasure boaters.

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Melanie
06/15/2008, Oswego NY

Time to get caught up on our adventures since we left the Bahamas in mid March, 2008. We crossed from Cat Island Bahamas to West Palm Beach and travelled up the ICW to Palm Coast. During that time we were traveling with our friends Herb and Carol from Utopia. (Herb made us a conch horn that we carry with us). We spent 3 weeks in Palm Coast at a fellow MTOA member's dock - allowing us to leave the boat and make two trips back to Asheville. Our friend Roy from Keystone Heights lent us his pickup for those trips. We installed 5 solar panels on top of the pilothouse to help with charging the batteries. Thanks Roy for allowing us to use your truck and for helping us install the solar panels.
We attended The Jacksonville MTOA rally on April 17 - 20th (our first since becoming members). It was a tremendous time - meeting fellow trawler owners and making new friends.
We left Jacksonville on Sunday August 20th with friends from Asheville, Steve Miller and his brother-in-law Matt aboard. We were making an overnight passage to Charleston. The America's Great Loop Cruising Association's rendezvous was to begin on Monday, April 21st at 2:00 pm. Steve and Matt had hoped to fish during the passage but we were not in the best of fishing grounds. We had a great weather window and made it to Charleston before noon on Monday. It was good to have help with the round-the-clock cruising during this leg of the trip. Thanks Steve and Matt!
We spent the next week in Charleston - learning all about the next leg of the Great Loop that we were about to embark upon. We caught up with our friends in Charleston and had a good visit.
From Charleston we travelled up the ICW into North Carolina. We visited Morehead City, Beaufort, Oriental, Elizabeth City and the Dismal Swamp. Kari met us in Oriental for a quick visit. It was good to see her - hadn't seen her since before Christmas.
We travelled with Freddy Freddy and Midnight Skulker through the Dismal Swamp until Solomon's MD. We had seen Freddy Freddy last fall in Florida and posted its picture on the blog. We enjoyed learning the history of the homemade boat and all the knowledge that Floyd and Della had to impart about our leg of the trip as well as information about the Great Loop.
We left Freddy Freddy and Midnight Skulker in Solomon's and travelled to Havre de Grace MD. We met up with some friends from our days living and working in Delaware. We met Jay and Ralph former co-workers with Terry when he was at DuPont, also Greg Taylor (our pastor from Asheville in the 90's.) Jay, Ralph, Greg and Terry water-skied and barefooted together on Lake Keowee. We had a great visit with them - and enjoyed catching up on each other's lives. Havre de Grace is a great town - we started using our bicycles here and haven't put them away since. Over the Memorial Day weekend there was a Chesapeake Bay MTOA rally in Havre de Grace. We visited with their group and met more trawler owners.
We travelled through the C&D Canal across the Delaware Bay and into the Cape May canal. We spent a very unpleasant night anchored near Cape May and then out to the Atlantic and the New Jersey shoreline. We spent several nights in Atlantic City at anchor. We walked the Boardwalk and were surprised how many people were there on a weekday and with the economy in such bad shape.
May 29 - Our next stop was for fuel on Coney Island - we felt fortunate to have found it for $4.00 per gallon. We spent that night in an anchorage behind the Statue of Liberty. It was a very quiet evening with a great view of Liberty Park, the statue and Ellis Island.
We travelled the Hudson River for three days and arrived in Waterford NY at the beginning of the Erie Canal on Monday, June 2. We would have liked to have been able to stop and sightsee along the way. The Hudson was beautiful and there was so much history. The 10 mile stretch that went through the Appalachian Mountains was just gorgeous! There was West Point Academy, FDR's home, George Washington's headquarters, etc. We spent a night at Nyack NY and two nights at Saugerties. The terrain became very steep and we have been getting a good workout on the bikes.
We started the Erie Canal on June 5. We have stopped along the way at the villages along the canal. One night it rained 1.5" and we only made it through one lock before they shut that section of the canal down due to flooding. We stayed that day at Canajoharie. The next morning the canal was open again. We prepared to enter lock 14 but there was no power to the next three locks. There had been an auto accident that took out a transformer. The lock had a generator but it required 2 people to start it. It was a circa 1800's generator and there was a big wheel that had to be turned and they had a hard time priming it. We had started out at 7 am and they opened the lock at 10 am. That day we were travelling with a motor vessel Bacchus and sailing vessel Ragtime. Bacchus was from Duluth MN and Ragtime from Canada.
We stopped in Rome, NY to visit Fort Stanwick and the Erie Canal historic village. We pulled into the dock at Rome and met a couple we had met in Canajoharie. They were from North Carolina and were travelling the Canal by car. They were also going to the Erie Canal village so we hitchhiked along and they brought us back to the boat afterwards. The village was too far by bicycle and we wouldn't have seen it otherwise. Thanks! The village was located on a portion of the old canal and they had a canal boat pulled by a team of horses. The village also had mini horses, a paint fox trotter and an Icelandic pony. Fort Stanwick was a fort from 1777 during the Revolutionary War.
Moving on - We crossed Lake Oneida hoping to get to a dock before a thunderstorm at 5 pm. The storm came early (11am) needless to say we were in the middle of the lake. The wind was so strong and there was rain and hail but it only lasted about 10 minutes. That was long enough. It is amazing the intensity of the storm and how quickly it came and went.
We stopped at Phoenix. They had a beautiful town dock and park. The first night we were there a car cruising club gathered on Main Street and there were 17 restored antique cars and trucks. This part of NY is very rural but lots of small villages. It is amazing that there are village after village with no grocery store.
Sunday, June 15, 2008 - We are now at Oswego NY. We are tied to a wall south of the last lock before Lake Ontario. We are debating whether to go to the Thousand Islands at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River or just straight to Kingston Ontario.

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Terry
03/07/2008, Big Majors at Staniel Cay

Seas The Day at anchor at Staniel. For those that know this anchorage this is just a little reminder of what you missed this year.

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Terry
03/07/2008, Thunderball Cave

This is so special to see this now down here. Everything is all white or just dark color.

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Terry
03/07/2008, Thunderball Cave

This is sponge coral and it is very rare to get the light just right to color like this.

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Terry
03/07/2008, Thunderball Cave

This guy wanted to know what that box was.

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Terry
03/07/2008, Thunderball Cave

It is very rare to see this kind of color in the coral. Usually you have to dive at dusk or at night and use lights to see all the real color in the coral.

The Coral is all dying or dead throughout the Caribbean. This was a real treat to see such vibrant living Coral.

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Terry
03/07/2008, Thunder Ball

The colors are so vivid in the fish and the coral that the camera had a hard time dealing with it.

This is what we saw it is not doctored.

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Terry
03/07/2008, Thunderball

Lots of you have wondered and asked what we do all day. Welllllllllll this is it!

We have invited one and all to come visit and enjoy this as well.

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