Day 28 - Exodus — Captain Father John

Miles cruised 22, fuel purchased $0, slip fee $45, daily high temperature 62*F

Sunday was the exodus from the AGLCA rendezvous. It was five days well spent learning about the journey ahead of us and meeting so many other Loopers. The downside were the wonderful buffets at each meal. So much food and hard to resist. Sitting in seminars all day and overeating at each meal is a bad combination. We are back on our “diets” now that we have departed the rendezvous. First thing Sunday morning 13 Looper boats departed in a herd to get through the locks and to try to get in a long day of cruising. We opted to depart about 1.5 hours after the first group. We are only cruising a short way back to Florence.

Today we will transit two locks (Wheeler and Wilson) and stay at the Florence Marina again.

We only had to wait 45 minutes to transit the Wheeler Lock. Oceanus joined us. There was a commercial tow coming down-bound but the lock master locked us through first. We waited while the 312′ Delta Mariner exited the Joe Wheeler lock. We cruised to the Wilson Lock along with Oceanus at 9 mph and were delayed for over 90 minutes. There was a commercial tow in the lock so we had to wait for her to lock-down. On the lock-up there was only one 19′ bass boat. The Wilson Lock was a 93′ drop. Oceanus is the other Looper boat cruising with two couples. They gave us a thumb drive with photos of CL in the lock and in some scenic areas. I will share them with you soon.

This is the Delta Mariner that exited the Joe Wheeler Lock

Temperatures are forecast to be back the high 70’s by the end of the week. Over night the temperature dropped to 35*F. We are running the heaters on our boat at night. We have four separate heating and air conditioning units. There is one one unit for each state room, one for the salon (living room/galley) and one for the cockpit. We need to be plugged into shore power or run the generator to us the heating/AC units. The unit in the aft cabin is a little noisy so Priscilla and I prefer not to use it. The unit in the salon also pumps not air into the aft head (bathroom) which keeps the head and aft cabin warm.

There are several Looper boats at this marina. They gathered for docktails on the dock next to us last night. We did not attend because we were watching the Cubs baseball game on our satellite TV. One of our first world problems has to do with receiving local TV channels. Whenever we move about 250 miles the local stations disappear from our Direct TV channel listing. I have to call Direct TV and let them know our new zip code and they set us up with local stations for our new area.

The Cubs lost the first two games of the National League division championship to the New York Mets 4 – 2 and 4 – 1. The next three games will be at Wrigley Field in Chicago. GO CUBS GO! This is a seven game series.

JP’s father-in-law, Don Carman in Dearborn, MI, has been maintaining a map of our Looper journey. He adds a pin for each location we dock. Black pins are for months, red/weeks and white/days.

We will retrace our course for two days until we get back to Counce, Tn where the Grand Harbor Marina is located. That is the entrance to the Tom Bigbee Canal that we will take all the way to Mobile, Al. While it is not a good idea to have a formal schedule due to weather and other unknowns, it is our intention to be in Mobile around October 30. Then we will cruise the Florida pan handle. The windy weather and large waves in the Gulf of Mexico will prohibit Loopers from trying to cross to Tarpon Springs for at least a week.

We walked over to a nearby park where the local fire department was sponsoring a fall family festival. Lots of kids games and hay bales decorated for fall. Continue reading

Here is nice photo of Changing Latitudes lit up by the neon light at the dock at Florence Matina.,/

Here is nice photo of Changing Latitudes lit up by the neon light at the dock at Florence Matina.,/

Carl (Chef) Wooden's quote for the day."A sailor’s joys are as simple as a child’s."- Bernard Moitessier