Running to Escape a Storm

Our First Day on the Great Loop Waterway!

After 485 hard days on the hard, dreaming of our Great Loop waterway adventure, we finally splashed our boat. We still weren’t ready. There were countless projects we still needed to complete, but we’re going for it now. Nothing is guaranteed, and we’ll find time to complete those projects during our Loop.

After making a few tweaks necessitated by our shakedown run from Ft. Pierce, we found ourselves needing to move north immediately, due to an impending storm. We set off on our Great Loop adventure with a 25 mile cruise to the safety of Banana River, in Indian Harbour Beach, FL. It rained off and on a few times during our 4 hour ride, but the storm held off until several hours after our arrival. Although we couldn’t outrun the storm completely, we could (and did) put more land in between us and the 40 mph winds coming in from the east.

The cruise was peaceful, with very few other boaters out. Instead we were in good company with pods of dolphins and scoops of pelicans.

We dropped the hook (Mantus M2 55 lbs) near a sunken S/V before cooking lunch and settling into our new home, M/Y Swamp Puppy. We stayed 3 nights tucked in here, waiting out the storm.

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