Bushwacker begins Great Loop Adventure!

[oldbluesplayer]

Denny - so glad to see you folks underway !! Folks from our marina in Narragansett Bay just finished wintering in the Bahamas, and are at the Norfolk gathering also, Susan and Greg on a Tiara 36 - they have a facebook blog going - Lucky Me Looping. I'll sign in on yours. You guys are gonna have a great trip !!

[uncleboo]

I had the pleasure of spending time with Denny and Arden last night. Arden is such a charming lady! Denny took the time to show me around the Dream Seeker and what a beautiful vessel she is. Don't know if I've seen that much teak on a boat before! Anyway, we had a wonderful evening enjoying conversation and seafood and I got my first taste of Pappy Vanwinkle! That stuff is dangerously delicious and ever so smooth! Wishing them a safe and wonderful journey!

[fg1]

Originally Posted by Bushwacker

Dream Seeker & crew departed on the 6000 mile Great Loop trip last Monday 4/15. My wife Admiral Arden, who is a much more creative writer than I, has started a blog documenting our adventure which will hopefully contain numerous pictures. If you go to https://dreamseeker.blog/about/, there is a spot where you can enter your email address so it will send you a note whenever there is a new entry.

We arrived at Palm Coast Marina in Jacksonville Beach about noon yesterday, just a couple of hours before the latest cold front arrived with a nasty squall line and predicted gale force winds! Arden’s daughter Valerie and her husband live just a few miles away and may spend the weekend aboard, after taking us to their home to do laundry and do some shopping and provisioning.

Arden and I spent a year looking at boats from NC to Marathon in the Keys, starting with older boats in the 35-40’ range. My good friend/neighbor and Best Man Jef, who I’ve known for ~25 years, developed CoreCell foam and is a composites expert and also a yacht broker, served as our buyers broker. After looking at about a dozen boats in our initial price range which all turned out to be project boats, he suggested that we would probably end up with a better value if we raised our target price a bit and looked at something a little newer. We made an offer on a number 13, a 2000 vintage boat in New Bern, SC, with a single Cummins 225, but it flunked it’s sea trial due to a bad fuel lift pump!

I had heard about Art DeFever, who appeared to be the Carl Moesly of the long range cruising world! His series of very well-designed trawlers appeared to be the “SeaCraft” of trawlers, so we started looking at DeFevers. Jef found [U][U]Dream Seeker in a yard in Stuart and described it as having “good bones” The 49’ Raised Pilot House model https://www.passagemaker.com/cruiser...r-defever-49-2 had just gone on the market and had everything we wanted except air conditioning, but he said if we could buy it cheap enough that we could afford to add AC, he felt it would be a good buy. Long story short, we did! Although I would have like to have more time fixing stuff, we decided that if we waited till I fixed everything, we’d never leave! And most folks doing this trip are 10-15 years younger, so we figured we’d better do it now while we still can! So off we go!

Ummm…. maybe a misunderstanding but CoreCell was developed by Tom Johansen and the Gurit corporation, a Dutch company.

[SailorChlud]

Update for those of you not subscribed to Denny's Looper blog:

Arden broke her wrist while picking up a mooring ball - apparently a cleat pulled out and hit her arm. She and Denny have flown or are about to fly back to Stuart for a visit to a surgeon. We wish them all the best and a speedy recovery to Arden.

[77SceptreOB]

Originally Posted by SailorChlud

Update for those of you not subscribed to Denny's Looper blog:

Arden broke her wrist while picking up a mooring ball - apparently a cleat pulled out and hit her arm. She and Denny have flown or are about to fly back to Stuart for a visit to a surgeon. We wish them all the best and a speedy recovery to Arden.

Wow, that is terrible to hear! I was so enjoying reading their blog posts. Maybe she can get her wrist worked on and they can resume their trip later this fall.

[uncleboo]

Being the pistol she is, I bet they're back underway within a week or two.

[Bushwacker]

Just a quick note to update everyone, as Arden has been too busy lately to make any more updates to her blog. Although we had excellent response from the paramedics and ER folks who set Arden’s wrist in a temporary cast, we flew home to Palm City the next day where we were able to see a wrist/hand specialist. He operated just a couple days later, getting the broken bones aligned perfectly with a plate and some screws. She began therapy a couple days later, got the stitches out yesterday, and is rapidly regaining use of her hand. In fact she’s now in the kitchen making some chicken chili! Although she’s still wearing a light cast when she’s not doing wrist exercises, I feel like I have a tiger by the tail trying to keep her from doing too much! She just brought me a spice bottle she had tried to open but was too tight!

We see the Dr. again on the 18th, and I expect he will be impressed enough with her progress that we’ll get the ok to resume our trip. However she will have to be treated as a “First Class Passenger” for the next couple of weeks, so we’ve found a person on the Great Loop forum who may be able to travel with us for a bit to help handling lines, etc. The canal up into Lake Champlain has been closed due to high water and current until just a couple days ago, so we may be able to catch up with some other boats we were traveling with once we get up into the Canadian canals, which is supposed to be the best part of the trip. The boat has been running very well so far with fewer problems than expected, so barring any dumb mistakes by the captain, I’m hoping we can get back on track in the near future!

We’ve been experiencing “withdrawal” symptoms with the lack of boating activity since leaving the boat in Annapolis, but we really enjoyed meeting Old’sCool and Uncle Boo during the trip, and have found time spent on the CSC forum to be a good antidote!

[gofastsandman]

Originally Posted by Bushwacker

Just a quick note to update everyone, as Arden has been too busy lately to make any more updates to her blog. Although we had excellent response from the paramedics and ER folks who set Arden’s wrist in a temporary cast, we flew home to Palm City the next day where we were able to see a wrist/hand specialist. He operated just a couple days later, getting the broken bones aligned perfectly with a plate and some screws. She began therapy a couple days later, got the stitches out yesterday, and is rapidly regaining use of her hand. In fact she’s now in the kitchen making some chicken chili! Although she’s still wearing a light cast when she’s not doing wrist exercises, I feel like I have a tiger by the tail trying to keep her from doing too much! She just brought me a spice bottle she had tried to open but was too tight!

We see the Dr. again on the 18th, and I expect he will be impressed enough with her progress that we’ll get the ok to resume our trip. However she will have to be treated as a “First Class Passenger” for the next couple of weeks, so we’ve found a person on the Great Loop forum who may be able to travel with us for a bit to help handling lines, etc. The canal up into Lake Champlain has been closed due to high water and current until just a couple days ago, so we may be able to catch up with some other boats we were traveling with once we get up into the Canadian canals, which is supposed to be the best part of the trip. The boat has been running very well so far with fewer problems than expected, so barring any dumb mistakes by the captain, I’m hoping we can get back on track in the near future!

We’ve been experiencing “withdrawal” symptoms with the lack of boating activity since leaving the boat in Annapolis, but we really enjoyed meeting Old’sCool and Uncle Boo during the trip, and have found time spent on the CSC forum to be a good antidote!

18th ehhhh?

We will be expecting to see you and Arden at the gathering.
Glad you went to a specialist!

[Old'sCool]

We enjoyed meeting you both and the boat tour. Arden will back 100% in no time!

[Bushwacker]

Further update . . . Saw Arden’s Dr. 19 days after surgery and he was amazed that the range of motion on her wrist was about 80-90% of normal. He said she was a superstar! Even said that a 6 week follow-up visit with a Dr. at some point during the loop was optional, so we will probably cancel the appoint she had already made with a Dr. near her son’s place in New Caanan, Ct. We flew to Annapolis the next day, spent a couple of days provisioning the boat and headed out last Friday and are now in Cape May, NJ. Will head out tomorrow for Atlantic City, then Manasquan, and on to the Hudson River.