Merry Christmas to all

  The Campbell Christmas Letter       2016

It’s been three years since SUMMERTIME became our home. Life aboard a 36 foot trawler has suited us surprisingly well. Leaving our boat tucked away in the southland while we returned to our beloved Maine woods cabin   made it possible for us to be with our grandchildren for the summer months of 2104 and 2015.  What a treat!  But this was “The Year of the Great Loop”.

In order to complete the 6,000 mile waterway trek, we had to be moving the boat through the northern waters of Lake Ontario, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan during the warmer summer months. We sure did miss our camping routines with the girls, now 7 and 9.  As soon as we returned to the Gulf waters on Mobile Bay/ Fairhope, Alabama in early November, we made a bee-line for Maine for the holidays.

We have been living with Erin, Brett, Emily, Bailey and puppy Cupcake for 7 weeks now. The rhythm of life of a growing family is sure different than ours. We walk the girls to and from school, with nippy to frigid weather prevailing most days...Br-r-r-!  After school, its off to swim lessons, gymnastics, karate, vocal and instrumental music lessons. With the first snowfall of the season, sledding is underway... soon to be followed by skating and skiing. We end each day snuggled together in bed reading the next chapter or two of a favorite book. Whew!  Brett has found his calling as Ass’t Professor of Mechanical Engineering Technology at the University of Maine; Erin assists students with their schedules as well as carrying out other protocol in the MET office. Church activities enthusiastically round out the week.

Since March 1st, we have traveled 5,500 miles of The Great Loop, cruising much of the navigable waterways east of the Mississippi. Early in January we will return to the boat in Mobile Bay. We’ll continue to explore the remaining 500 miles of the Gulf waters from the Florida Panhandle (Pensacola, Destin, Panama City, Port St. Joe, Appalachicola, and Carrabelle) cruising through the night to the Florida’s West Coast (Tarpon Springs, Duneden, Clearwater and St. Pete). At that point we will “cross our wake” and claim the title of Gold Loopers... thru-hikers on The Great Loop Trail of 6,000 miles!  If you have been following us on our blog (wallyand darcy.blogspot.com), you already know that this has been a life-changing experience for us. Our fellow cruisers have become our support group and our cherished new friends.

So what’s next?  We’ll catch our breath during February and March at the City of Fort Myers Yacht Basin, poking up and down the West Coast as the spirit moves us. We’ll have our car, so we can cross-cross the penisula to visit friends, also. Back at the lake in Maine in April, we’ll catch up with some projects that didn’t get done last summer. The joys of boat and cabin ownership always involve something to fix or improve upon!  And of course we’ll be welcoming our granddaughters back to the camp activities. Our trawler SUMMERTIME will come out of the water at Charlotte Harbor and spend her summer under cover during hurricane season. We’ll return to Florida in October to do annual boat maintenance so that she can return to the water in early November as our insurance allows.  Such is the ebb and flow of our lives. We hope this finds you doing well and being happy. May God’s blessings be with you...not only during this Christmas season, but throughout the coming year.          Love, Darcy and Wally     

                    (828) 231-5025      wallyand darcy@gmail.com

Nov. 12, 2016 Orono, Maine Wally’s 69th birthday

We arrived in Fairhope/Daphne, Alabama on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay on November 2.  An unusually large number of us Loopers had been clotted together between Demopolis, AL and Bobby’s Fish Camp on the Black Warrior-Tombigbee Waterway. It seems that each of us has boat insurance with a stipulation about where you CAN NOT BE during “Hurricane Season”. Some insurance companies specify June 15-November 1 as hurricane season; others, June 1- November 15. Whichever date it is, your boat cannot travel on water south of the 31st parallel. On the East Coast of the U.S. it is just above the Cumberland Islands of Georgia. On the Gulf Coast it is in the vicinity of Demopolis with it’s one marina. Since we were only two days away from our deadline, 11/1, and no named hurricanes were brewing, we called our insurance company to ask for a variance and we were given one! We were cautioned, however, that if we had continued past the specified boundary without their approval, our insurance would have been ruled null and void for any damage incurred, hurricane or not. Who knew!! 

Mobile, Alabama’s Ship Basin was really alive with tugs creating tows from the barges tied up and down the shoreline.  A ship was being piloted in from the Gulf and a tug was waiting to help with docking. We were totally relaxed in the midst of all this activity, keeping up with their comings and goings on our VHF radio. It wasn’t until we were out in the relative quiet of Mobile Bay that we recognized how far our comfort-zone had expanded since our life on the water began in December of 2014 when we purchased Summertime. 

From the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay we now have 500 miles before we cross our wake and claim to be Thru-loopers... a bit like Thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail. We’ve covered 5,500 miles in about 8 months. Our decision to tuck our trawler into a slip in Fairhope, AL and complete the Great Loop in January came easily once we understood what the next 500 miles entailed. We not only have 6 long cruising days to get to Carrabelle in Florida’s Panhandle, but we have an overnight 170 mile open water crossing to get from there to Tarpon Springs down Florida’s Peninsula. We want to see the sights in Pensacola, Destin, Panama City, Port St. Joe and Appalachicola; we also have to wait for a two-day window of safe weather to open in order to make that all important crossing. 

A gathering in Fairhope,Alabama before heading for Florida

Fairhope's French Quarter

The Marina Kitty

We had too many “have-tos” to coordinate and still make it back to Maine for the holidays.... we decided to drive a one-way rental car 10 hours to the Clearwater/St. Pete area on November 5th. Once there, we used our own car that has been under cover at Wally’s family’s condo since late April. We gave the condo a last up-date before it goes on the real estate market. On the afternoon of November 10th we flew the non-stop Allegiant Air flight back to Bangor, Maine. Our trip to Orono in the Ellis family car took less than 20 minutes.  We started our visit out by attending a U of M Women’s Hockey Game on the Nov. 11th Veteran’s Day holiday.  Today, Nov. 12th, we continued the festivities with Wally’s 69th birthday celebration... waking up to a Brett-cooked scrumptious apple pancake breakfast. (By the way, it was a blustery 28 degrees at 7:00 this morning. We haven’t felt that temperature in a while...Br-r-r-r!) Nevertheless, we are absolutely delighted to be with our precious grand-daughters, Emily and Bailey, and Erin and Brett and puppy Cupcake for Thanksgiving and Christmas!! 

Watching a U of Maine women's hockey game


Created by Darcy O Campbell

Oct. 25, 2016 The Waverley Mansion in Columbus, MS

Built in 1852, this stunning antebellum home fell into disrepair when the George Hampton Young family line came to an end in 1913. Over the next 40 years the thousand acre plantation returned to forest lands; the four-story building all but disappeared from view and from memory. In 1962 antique dealer Robert Snow and his wife discovered Waverley Mansion wrapped in vines. Once inside the abandoned building, they fell in love with the four winding staircases leading up and up and up. They took up residence, all the while repairing, cleaning and restoring the building to its former grandeur. 

As soon as we made our way up the path to the formal entryway of the Waverley Mansion, docent Jimmy stepped off the veranda and greeted us enthusiastically. It was 10am and we were his first visitors of the day. After he collected $10.00 per person, our tour guide was off and running. Wally and I and Teresa and Steve from Sanctuary, another Looper boat, had made the short drive together from the Columbus Marina in the courtesy car. We had two hours to absorb the history of this 164-year old home that had survived the devestation of the Civil War. Jimmy brought the past to life as his stories began to unfold. Before we climbed the winding staircases to the second story of four bedrooms, we were invited to step outside to stroll around the garden areas. Rather off-handedly, Jimmy mentioned that Mr. Snow, the owner for the past 54 years, along with one daughter and grandson, still lived in the mansion. In fact, he told us, that at age 92, he was known to tend the gardens during the daily tours. We let our gaze travel across the lawn and there, to our amazement, was the elderly Mr. Snow raking under the trees, attended by his 12-year old black lab, Talula! You could have knocked all four of us over with a peacock feather... three peacocks were actually nearby. When would you ever visit a mansion dating back before the Civil War and find that the second owners were still living there...eating, sleeping, and enjoying it as their home? The rooms were beautifully appointed with period furnishings... no sign of today’s world to be seen. But wait, carefully tucked in behind the canopy in one elaborate bedroom was a flat-screen TV, a modern electric fan and a corded phone. Quite likely we had spotted Mr. Snow’s hide-away.   

Created by Darcy O Campbell

October 29,2016 Demopolis AL

With only two locks to go in our Great Loop adventure, I must include “The story of a crane, two coons and three crows.” As we began our descent in one of the recent locks, we noticed that a large crane (blue heron) had taken a lookout stance on the upper ridge of the lock gate that had just closed behind us. Three crows soon took their places on the inner face of the gate just below the heron. All four birds looked extremely serious. Over the VHF radio came the lockmaster’s voice. He explained that “George”, the blue heron, had become a daily visitor to the lock. An opportunist by nature, he was looking for tasty morsels such as fish that often get beached on the lock gate or the sill beneath the gate as the water plunges down and out. Along with the crows, George is sometimes joined by raccoons who nimbly climb down the repair/rescue ladder to the sill beneath the gate! It is our experience that lockmasters are only glimpsed as they perform their duties and they only repond to questions or give brief instructions concerning operation of the lock. To have this lockmaster share a piece of his daily life in which he obviously takes great delight was a rare treat. What a blessing for us all.

George looking for tasty morsels

Crows ever hopeful

Turkey vultures waiting for their turn

Created by Darcy O Campbell

Oct. 23-28, 2016 Grand Harbor, Midway and Columbus, MS; Sumpter County Rec. Area anchorage and Demopolis, AL

The mechanics of “movin’ on” on the Tom-Bigbee Waterway and the Black Warrior River involve group travel. Much of those waterways are made up of dams and pools. The locks allow for upbound and downbound vessel traffic. Since each lock chamber is 110’ wide, 600’ long and 32’ deep, the fill and dump takes lots of water (15,840,000 gallons.) and a fair amount of time ( 20-30 minutes). For the past 237 miles we have followed a protocal for passing through the 10 locks that keeps the lockmasters happy. I have borrowed a word from the RV world and call it “caravaning”. The lead boat captain phones the lock early in the morning to report the number of boats traveling together that day... and asks about the availability of the locks. Tugs and tows have priority over pleasure craft. If the lockmaster can get a group of pleasure boats locked through before the commercial traffic arrives, he will tell the lead boat captain to come right along with his group. If the commercial traffic’s arrival is imminent, he will tell the lead boat captain to keep the group in the marina or anchorage for 2 hours or so and then come along. Once it’s time to go, we proceed single file along the waterway and into the lock’s chamber. Contact with the lockmaster, at this point, is made over the VHF radio. With five floating bollards (attachment points) on each side of the chamber, we choose a starboard or portside tie and secure ourselves to a midships cleat on our boat. Our typical group size has been 4 or 5. The one day that we traveled with 10 others, some of us rafted together. We end some days in a marina; others on anchor. Lately we have been traveling from dawn to dusk. This schedule creates havoc with our naptime!  To be ready for the early departure each day, we have to be in bed by 7:30 each night.  Oh, and did I mention that just around the next bend of the river may be the view that takes our breath away? Ah, yes!

Typical flow of the river...twists and turns

The Dolly Parton Bridge!

Created by Darcy O Campbell