Nov. 6- Dec. 18 Our Kadey Krogen Manatee trawler passes the muster and we grab a flight to Maine

Our annual Thanksgiving visit with Erin and her family was upon us. Before we left “Summertime” still high and dry in the Safe Cove Boat Yard, her survey had been completed... with a score of above average! We then found an insurance company that offered us a good coverage at a reasonable cost. Whew! Allegiant Air flew us from St. Pete/ Clearwater, FL to Bangor, ME in 3 hours non-stop. Erin met us with the winter coats that we had stashed at the Ellis’ house before we left Maine in October. The ground was bare but the temps were in the 30’s. Br-r-r-r!  We noticed the cold more than the younger set. They reveled in it. 

Emily's famous and delicious made-from-scratch carrot cake

Orono, with its U Maine campus, is a bustling town. There are always lots of social moments to choose from. As a result, the Ellis family has a busy life... school, church with choir and bell-ringers and a variety of after-school activities. Erin is on the Orono School Board and works in the Engineering Dept. office at UMO. Brett has several big projects in the works as well as his daily teaching commitments at UMO. Emily and Bailey are making great gains with piano lessons.

I was impressed with how well we could play Christmas carols as piano duets together. Wally and I are looking forward to having the girls join us here on the boat in Florida during their February school vacation.

With Wally’s bother moving from Millinocket to the Sugarloaf Mountain of Western Maine, 98-year old Mother June said good-by to her loving Sweet Seniors Guest Home and moved closer to son Jason. She seems to be adjusting well to her new environment.

Back in Florida, our friends in the Port Charlotte area gave us a “Splash Over” party the day our trawler went back in the water. The boatyard staff was surprised with the interest generated by their Travellift expertise. They were also impressed that our royal send-off went on for 3 hours. Thank you Paula and Dale, Pam and Bob and Pat and Alan!

Pam, Dale and Paula

Pam, Alan, Dale, Paula

Wally, Pat, and Bob with Darcy taking the pictures

We made our way down the 8-mile freshwater canal, locked through to salty Charlotte Harbor and crossed to Pelican Bay at Cayo Costa State Park.

Cayo Costa is our favorite anchorage

Sunsets are always beautiful

It was fabulous to be back on the water, anchored and then strolling down the Gulf shore side of the island. After two overnights, we made our way 35 miles south on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) to the Caloosahatchee River. Our slip in the City of Fort Myers Yacht Basin awaited us 9 miles to the east. 

Our slip for the next couple of months

Our view of the ever-so beautiful sunset

Pat and Alan from my hometown in Maine took us back to the boat yard (a 1-hour drive, but 2-day cruise!) to get our car. They are spending 3 months in a lovely neighborhood near the boatyard and had just visited friends in Fort Myers Beach, so retrieving our car with them was the perfect answer. We stayed overnight with them and enjoyed sharing stories and swimming in their pool.

We joined the Appalachian Strings at the Cultural Center of Charlotte County. For 2 hours on Tuesday mornings we play our mountain dulcimers with about 30 other enthusiasts. Ukulele players gather once a month just before the dulcimers. It’s the perfect world for us!

Dulcimer Jam

My sister Val and her husband Rick moved their “Whit’s End II” from Myrtle Beach, SC to Fort Pierce, FL recently. We drove across the South Florida peninsula to the Atlantic side to welcome them to our world. The Ft. Pierce City Marina has expanded its docks and it very up-to-date and welcoming. Friends Rob and Trish arrived on “Linda Jean”  and we all enjoyed a night of camaraderie.  

Rick, Darcy, Tricia, Wally, Rob
on Whit's End II

Val, Darcy, Tricia, Wally, Rob

Val and Darcy

We are enjoying being reunited with friends here in Florida. One of the most unexpected reunions happened after 40 years.

Darcy, Wally and Alayne

Elayne last saw us before we left Pittsfield, MA for Saudi Arabia. A Facebook Friend, she contacted us when she was in South Florida and we welcomed her to pay us a visit on the boat. What a lot of catching up we did in a few hours! We drove to Naples this week to visit with Dan and Natalie...friends from our Mexican travel days around 2000. It was great to see each other after all these years.

As we begin our 5th season of cruising, we are always delighted to renew friendships with folks we’ve met along the way. Dave and Barb from “Miss my Money” brought the “Cat Daddy” folks by and we reminisced about our Great Loop time together. Every day another boat or two arrives here in the Yacht Basin for a prolonged stay. How great is that!?!

Dave from "Miss My Money"

Dave, Darcy, Annette and Rafe from "Cat Daddy"

Wally started a new eating plan 242 days ago. On that day he weighed in at 242 lbs. Today he weighed 198.2 lbs! It’s been 30 years since he last broke the 200 mark. It’s been a serious effort on our part to eat healthy meal after meal. Wally is beaming as he slips into new clothes that really show off his trim figure. I dropped 15 lbs in the process so I’m liking my trim figure, too. At 70 and 71, we feel that we are giving ourselves a longer future for a fun and active life. 

  

Season #5 Port Charlotte, Florida Nov. 5, 2017

It’s been a month since we bid farewell to Maine. We had lived in our cabin on Bottle Lake since May 10, 2017... our boat tucked high and dry in a covered bay in a boat yard on Florida’s Gulf Coast. It had been a summer of visits with Erin, Brett, Emily, Bailey and Cupcake... both at Lakeville and Orono.

Great fun every time. Dad’s camp got its stately new underpinnings last fall; now it looks even more more spiffy with its new steel roof and restored southern pine floors. The front porch has skylights worked into the steel roof and a great one-piece floor covering that looks like natural stone.

Snazzy! The neglected woodshed was re-purposed into a sturdy storage building for winter storage of the grill, the bicycle built-for-two, lawn mowers and garden tools. 

Eighteen family members and close friends gathered each evening over the supper meals during the week that Val, Rick and Venessa and friend Fred, 98 and 92 years young, paid us their yearly visit.

Since we left, Kevin, Kyle, Joe and Tylar have replaced the old hemlock logs in the dock cribbing with fresh timbers. Looks amazing! Dad would be tickled with all the improvements. Cheryl did a great job capturing the rebuild on camera so the whole family could revel in the moment.

Joe, Tylar, Kyle and Kevin

Wally’s mother turned 98 in September. She continues to be well-cared for by the loving staff of the Sweet Seniors Guest Home in East Millinocket.

Cruiser friends with a family retreat on the coast invited us to join them... two times! Our long-time friend Carole, whose interest in our blog has become legendary, brought her dull knife collection to our cabin.

After a leisurely tour of the improvements of the O’Brien/Campbell compound, she returned home with a dozen sharp knives. How great is that? Gardening fell to Wally this summer. His daily crop care paid off with great fresh produce.

Somehow Wally and I managed to fit in a 10-day motorcycle trip, touring clock-wise around Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula in August. Breath-taking scenery... mountainsides to the right, expanses of the St. Lawrence Seaway to the left with tiny hamlets nestled in the scalloped coastline. French was the language of choice of the Quebecois. We managed to find food, restrooms and fuel, despite our inability to even begin to master their language. Luckily we had booked our overnights on-line...in English!

Emily and Bailey may have started a new end-of-summer tradition... a “S’Mores and More Party” at Dad’s camp for the Windy Shores Road camp owners. The “More” was campfire pies... m-m-m. The response from the girls’ hand-delivered invitations was heart-warming. It was a social moment that was long over-due.

Wayne,Chick,Ellen Monika,Betty,Lynn,Lois

We had a flurry of visits as we moved south... every one of them a treat. Family in MA, Cruisers in VA, two weeks with our Black Mountain Home for Children family, two couples from our Saudi days in NC, family in Myrtle Beach, SC, RVers from our Benson, AZ Co-op days and Bottle Lake neighbors here in FL. We even shocked ourselves by springing for tickets to a sold-out Eagles concert at the 18,000-seat Greensboro, NC Coliseum.

The recently departed Glenn Frey would have been blown away by the stellar performances of his remaining band members along with guest singer Vince Gill and Glenn’s own 22 year-old son Deacon.  The NC State Fair the next day in nearby Raleigh was incredible as well.

We’ve been living aboard Summertime “on the hard”... perched up on dry land... in Port Charlotte, FL since October 21st. Hurricane Irma passed over this area on Sept. 10th roaring along at 125 mph. Not a boat here at Safe Cove Boat Yard with its covered bays suffered damage!  Thank you Lord!

I’d love to say that we take delight in making the entrances and exits to and from Summertime from a wobbly 6-foot step ladder... but I can’t. It’s a pain in the neck and it doesn’t get better over time. We are also expected to capture all our dishwater and bodily fluids and deposit them at the bathroom halfway across the boat yard. Yuck! Despite these difficulties, Wally has managed to sand and paint the expansive bottom of our trawler. I did my best to “keep his courage up” while dealing with a Polymyalgia Rheumatica symptoms break-through. The muscle misery came back with a vengeance when I inadvertently missed taking one 1 mg tablet one night and it took 7 days to recover...Ahhhhh!  Now we are back in business working together on cleaning, buffing and waxing the hull and the stainless rail. Summertime verily glistens. With our boat insurance due for renewal, we have a required out-of-water boat survey scheduled for next week. We are working to have our Kadey-Krogen Manatee ship-shape from engine room to pilot house, aft deck to master stateroom, by that time. Whew!  

In our spare time, Wally and I have been assessing what our future endeavors might be. We have been looking at late model RVs that would, #1, let us travel comfortably and,#2, be equally comfortable for Erin’s family to travel in on our “off-season”. The recently created 31-foot bunkhouse models with a queen-size walk-around bed is very appealing to us. 

It’s now November 5th, 2017. We continue to follow our eating plan. I am holding at a 15 lb. loss and Wally just reached his goal of 40 lb. loss after 195 days. Everything we eat is written down and calories tallied... it keeps us honest and on the downward swing. We feel great! 

May 1 & 2, 2017 Pelican Bay to Safe Cove, Inc. Boat Storage Yard in Port Charlotte, FL

It took another 4 hours to cross from Pelican Bay to the top of Charlotte Harbor. Entering the fresh water canal leading to the Safe Cove, Inc. Boat Storage Yard involved passing through a user-operated lock.  Even though we had cleared 106 locks while on the Great Loop, we were still a bit anxious about negotiating the narrow approach and landing on a short dock to pull the access chain. A couple in a boat offered to use their remote control to open the entrance door and we readily accepted their offer. Come to find out, they were from Falmouth, Maine. Once inside the lock, the next activating chain to pull extended down from our pilot house level. We were able pull that easily, closing the entrance door and then opening the exit door of the lock ourselves. For 1 1/2 hours we putt-putted along through the various canal neighhoods, arriving at the Safe Cove dock. Lots of boats were already tied up awaiting their turn with the Travel Lift. Owner Jack helped us with our lines and then delivered me to our car waiting for us near the office. The rest of the afternoon was spent toting our many packed bags and boxes off the boat, down the dock and into the car. After completing two loads of laundry, we made our last supper from the remaining refrigerated food and tumbled into bed. That night drought-stricken Charlotte Harbor was blessed with a four-hour deluge of rain complete with nature’s sound and light show. Our Summertime was scheduled for her haul-out at 9am. Right on schedule the process began. The pressure-washed surface of her lower hull showed us that the bottom paint we rolled on 3 years ago was still in good shape... remarkable! Summertime was ceremoniously placed next to Liberty, a Pilgrim 40... our second-most favorite type of trawler. From May 2 to early November they will share a covered space.  After eating some of the best Thai food ever, we crashed and slept for 11 hours in air-conditioned splender at a nearby hotel. At our age, we are learning that it takes longer to recover from big exertions than it used to!

Self operated lock  to separate the salty Charlotte harbor from the fresh water canal system

Canal System

Safe Cove Boat Storage Yard

Thus ends the saga!

Created By Darcy O Campbell