Week 1 America's Great Loop on LoveMeFender

Dear LoveMeFender friends:  

This BLOG is meant to be our personal journal for our great loop adventure to be shared with close friends and family.  You can also follow our adventures on YouTube where we will try to post a video every week or so. Search @LoveMeFender on YouTube.  Again, the intended audience is family and friends  mostly.   It is not intended to be entertaining or to go viral so beware of boredom.

Tuesday

Got all loaded, look at the pictures to appreciate how much stuff we were taking!

First miracle, we got a bigger vehicle! The biggest one they had at the time Ed got a reservation was a 5 seater. This a cause of stress. But when we got there they had just gotten a Durango in, so much more space

We had only been gone 6 hours when, Elise texts she has a leak in her basement! Thank goodness for awesome ward members who came to the rescue!

1 am drove through wicked thunderstorms. It was like driving through a waterfall!! We could hardly see. We stopped to sleep at 4:30 am at a rest stop for 4 hours in Missouri. 

 

Wednesday

We took a little detour to liberty to see the liberty jail and have our institute class. Then we drove to St Loius to see the gateway arch.  It was fascinating to see how that arch was constructed. This year marks the 60th anniversary.  It took 3 years to build.  We stopped to sleep on the border of Indiana and Kentucky in a hotel.

Thursday

We drove to Lexington and stopped at our favorite restaurant for lunch-Rafferty's, and got their famous croissants and 8 to go!  Then we drove by our old house. It looks the same as it did in 1989. 

Beautiful drive through eastern KY and western Virginia. We had more killer thunderstorms. We received the email that the paperwork all went through on the boat and we can take possession as planned tomorrow.  There had been a 1 day delay due to weather with the delivery of documents. We own the boat!!! We arrived in Washington north Carolina late, so we stayed in a hotel.

Friday

We arrived at the boat. We spent several hours just loading the boat and trying to get organized.

It's very hot and humid!  We got dehydrated, cramps and near heat stroke taking multiple cart loads from the parking lot all they way to the end of the dock in the Marina at Cypress Landing.

Ed has to do some maintenance things before we can take off. We went to Washington for dinner.  It's bigger and has a Walmart. We saw the home of Cecil B. DeMille the famous movie maker like the ten commandments.  Washington was founded in the 1760s. There are 30 buildings still standing. Downtown is very quaint. We did a Walmart run to get provisions. 

Saturday

Cont. maintenance trips to town to buy needed things.  Ed changed the transmission oil and filter, added a huge hose clamp to the exhaust riser and adjusted the hot water temperature; all things on the must do list of the survey.

Late afternoon we did our first shake down cruise over to Washington city harbor.

Things to learn: boat is bigger, bow and stern thrusters and anchor using a windless

It took us an hour to set the anchor cuz the rope was old and stiff.  We finally got the snubber on the chain and did a shallow anchoring in 4 ft of water!  We had dinner on the hook. All in all successful trial run.

 

Sunday

Church in Greenville, NC today, about 40 min drive each way.  Nice ward, wonderful city great people.  After church we napped and got ready for our first night out at anchor.  We definitely need a new longer anchor chain.  Hopefully it holds us through the night. 

Here's your cliff hanger! You'll have to wait until next week's blog to see if we made it or if the anchor came loose in the night and we drifted. We have an anchor alarm to alert us to that, supposedly. Hopefully everything works!

That's it for this week!

YouTube Week 1 Video link:

https://youtu.be/OWOzsxdjqW0?si=brrjVuUQrf_JcaYI