Delaware City Marina Review

This was one of the very best stops we've ever made in many many years of cruising. From the first moment, the staff was courteous, knowledgable, professional and welcoming. The canal is narrow and has a strong current, but if you follow their detailed instructions it is very easy. The canal is well protected during any weather or wind state.

The day before arriving, call them on the phone to arrange dockage. They will instruct you to call again once you leave the C&D Canal. At that point they will instruct you to call on the radio as you arrive at Red 6A. They will then instruct you to stay within 40 feet of Green 1 then angle over toward the ferry dock and proceed down the canal. The marina is 4 long face docks to starboard. Be aware of the boat launch to port as you come down the canal, especially on the weekends as it's a very busy boat launch. The fourth dock is for transients with gas/diesel/ and a very strong pump-out at the head of the dock. Once you depart the fuel dock they will guide you to your place on the face dock and tie you up. Then they will turn your boat around using lines so that you are faced back out the channel for your departure. The whole process was quick and completely painless. Zach brought us in, but Charlie and Chris and Tim all handle the docking and are all extremely proficient. They have years of experience at this, so pay attention and all will be well.

As to the facilities: The docks are floating and in excellent condition. Power pedestals are well kept. Water is at the dock with excellent pressure even at the very end of the dock. The restrooms are clean and modern and well supplied. The laundry has two washers and two dryers at $1.50 each (2024). They are well maintained and efficient. The store at the office is well supplied with basic parts and if you need anything else most can be had by the next day. There are some snacks and ice and there is a small convenience mart a short walk away as well as many restaurants all within walking distance. It is a very pet friendly marina.

If you are a history buff, there are many historical markers to study along the canal walkway. You can also ride the ferry over to Fort Delaware where they have a Civil War reenactment. Ferry prices are reasonable at $12 each. You cannot land a private boat on the island where the fort is located.

As to the personnel: Tim Konkus, the owner, was unbelievably knowledgable and supportive throughout our outboard repair. He is the primary presenter for their daily weather briefing and route planning from the marina to Cape May down the Delaware River. The briefing was well written and full of helpful information for this area unfamiliar to us and delivered with a bit of humor. Foster, the harbor host for the area, also contributes frequently at the briefing with a lot of useful information and Zach and Charlie also present the briefing on occasion. Charlie, Zach, and Chris were very proficient at handling the docking and turning of the boats and very courteous.

As to the maintenance facility: Pricing was fair and the work was quality. The marina has a travel lift that can haul and launch even larger boats. There is a small storage yard. John is a Yamaha factory trained technician and was able to repair our Yamaha F9.9 outboard. While I don't know all the technicians that work here in the shop, the two I dealt with—John and James—were two of the most polite young men I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with in the marine industry. Having worked in customer service for over 30 years I can always tell the caliber of a manager by the quality of the people who work for him and by the camaraderie among the employees. Tim is clearly an excellent manager because this staff works well together and gets the job done.

I can't say enough good about this place. While we would have preferred not to be sitting here for ten days waiting on parts, it was a great place to be—entertaining, excellent services, great people, and a safe place for the boat. Highly recommend this as a stop.

Tim Konkus doing the weather briefing

Success!

We have success! The Dink has motivation. I walked up to the marina office this morning to discuss some kind of alternative to getting us back underway. One we had in mind was to rent a car, drive to the nearest Suzuki dealer, buy a new engine for about the same amount of money has we have already spent sitting here trying to get the Yamaha fixed, and be on our way. We would leave the Yamaha for them to do with as they pleased.

Much to my surprise I walked into the shop and there was the Yamaha puttering contently in the work stand. Not too long after that is was mounted back on the Dink and puttering contently once again. Some thought was given to making a hurried departure and being on our way to Cape May. When I say “some” I mean about 10 seconds worth. Pretty much every time we have made a hurried departure the day turned sour. There was weather that looked like it might catch us out in the middle of the bay and still and hour or more from our destination. More reason to spend another day or two here. But, knowing that we can leave rather than wondering when we will be able to leave makes all the difference. Besides, there was still a smelly leak in the head that would have been more than a little irritating to most people, let alone a couple of perfectionists. (Next to outboard motors marine heads have to be considered one of the most relentlessly troublesome and irritating systems on a boat.)

So, with nothing else much to do, Deb started the disassembly process. I offered to help but, truth to tell, the head on First Light is single occupancy only regardless of the purpose for the visit. Envision rebuilding anything mechanical and pretty gross while in a smelly phone booth with the door shut, and you will have a good idea of what kind of day she had. I kept asking if she needed anything and was around to help out any way I could. Which was mostly by reviewing the YouTube vid on the process and handing her parts and tools. By days end the head was working so much better, wasn't leaking any more, and the ambiance in First Light was much improved.

So now we are just waiting on the weather. One of the really helpful things about being at the Delaware City Marina is the daily “Captain's Meeting.” Each day at 1600 local they pull up the weather forecasts while offering the best information available, that of local knowledge. They know all the shallow spots, where and how the commercial traffic will be moving, the best bail out options in the bay, what the currents and tides do, and how those interact with prevailing winds to determine what kind of day it will be for those traveling by Looper style boats. Today's discussion suggested that tomorrow will be an okay day to go. But Deb and I are both pilots who spent nearly 6 years living on Kintala. We listen to what others have to offer but we make all own weather decisions. Our look at the weather suggested that tomorrow might be an okay day to go. At this moment there is a cold front lurking less than 100 miles to our west inbound. Two of the weather apps we use are suggesting winds in the 10 to 15 knot range for much of tomorrow. Ten to fifteen makes a sailboater smile. So far our experience suggest that 10 to 15 knots in 42 foot trawler, particularly with miles and miles of fetch, will make a trawler crew wish they were somewhere else. Have the wind and currents going nose to nose rather than moving side by side and the trawler crew will definitely wish they were somewhere else. So we are likely to be here another day or so. Still...

Success!

Patience

So the Yamaha that we hoped to have hanging on the back of the Dink today is still dead. It will be dead for some unknown amount of time yet. It looks like even a day's delay will lead to yet a longer delay as tomorrow's weather window is a one day only offer. The next opportunity to head down the bay without getting beat up by waves and wind? Maybe Thursday. Maybe Friday. Maybe not.

How did we get here? The first new part we ordered was the wrong part. The second new part that we ordered was delivered over a holiday weekend and wasn't installed until this morning. The engine ran for two minutes, died, and would not restart. The current theory is that a control module failure of some kind fried the first charge coil when we were in Chesapeake City. Now it has done in the new replacement charge coil as well. So a new control module and another new charge coil is on order. The new control module is due in tomorrow. A new charge coil? That remains a mystery. In the meantime, the fancy motor mount bracket on the dink remains empty.

One of the many things I didn't know about living on a boat is that it will leave one with just two options. Option first is to completely lose one's mind. Option second is to become a paragon of patience, acceptance, and calmness. I am caught somewhere in between the two. I haven't quite lost my mind. But it may have been temporarily misplaced. I am certainly not any kind of paragon of patience. But I don't have much choice in the matter. The fact is the world will unfold as it will with zero regard as to how I want, or intend, for it to unfold. All I can do is try to make the best decisions based on what I know at this very moment. That the next moment may render those decisions null and void is simply how the world works. It is how the world works for everyone.

So we will sit here for a while yet, holding with the idea that getting this motor fixed, whatever it takes and however long it takes, is the best decision. Had we known the future we could have spent the dock fees we have spent here at docks at the the end of each of the legs coming up. Had we done that we would likely be somewhere in the Hudson River right now, moving away from the coast and done with big water until we get to the Great Lakes. But that isn't what happened. So I guess, so long as we are sitting here watching our decisions fade into a past that didn't happen, I might as well hunt around and see if I can find what little of my mind remains.

We spend a lot of time doing this...

And cleaning things like the very very dirty bug/sun screens

And exploring the Delaware Fort State Park where we found this diving bell. I kid you not, someone had to be lowered under the water in this thing to do repairs on the locks. The only air they had was what was in the bell. Yikes.

And we watch the constant parade of boats that go by

Mostly I sit in the cockpit enjoying the breeze blowing down the side deck while I read and do my Duolingo Spanish lessons.

A view from the flybridge 

Yamaha Engine Blues

We have been sitting for several days trying to get our Yamaha 9.9 hp outboard repaired. It should have been a simple issue to resolve. Just replace a coil in the ignition system. The problem is getting the coil. The Yamaha dealership network apparently doesn't have a single one of them in inventory anywhere. The Factory will be glad to get one on its way, shipping time is anywhere from five to ten days, maybe more, depending on if they have to manufacture one before sending it to us. I never made friends with the Merc on Kintala's dink. After what looked like a budding relationship with Yamaha, our relationship appeared to hit a bit of a bump. I have little use for manufacturers who have such a skinny parts inventory on hand that a simple failure takes days to resolve. So who do I try next? Honda? Suzuki? We have had good relationships with motorcycles built by each. I wonder if their outboards are as good?

We found an after-market part that got here in two days but, as was not a total surprise, the part we ordered didn't actually fit. Then, as it turned out, that was not actually an after-market parts issue. The issue was that we were given the wrong part number to order. Having spent a good bit of my professional life trying to make sense of manufacturer's parts manuals, I can't find too much fault with that kind of mistake. And there is actually an upside. We could have ordered the number we were given from the factory (at five times the cost), waited five or more days, and then found out we had ordered the wrong part. 

This way we figured it out in two days. With the right part number in hand, Deb found another aftermarket one in stock. Word is it will be here Sunday. Okay. Unfortunately, it is a holiday weekend. The shop will not be working on the motor until Tuesday. That makes Wednesday the earliest we can leave. But at least we have a tentative date for being on our way. Which is better than not having a clue. In the meantime, we're enjoying being in a no-wake, protected channel over what promises to be a long holiday weekend of drunken boater antics. And for the moment, it doesn't get any better than that.

This is what a morning on the dock waiting looks like.

The facility here is really pretty. The grounds are landscaped nicely, there are a couple of parks along the waterway, and a brick path that walks the whole length of the channel.

There have been a pretty impressive collection of boats on this dock. 

An ounce of prevention...

There's a really good reason why clichés become clichés. There's always a huge amount of truth that went into the making of them. We've been trying to chase down a fuel leak in the starboard engine for a while now. It's enough to dampen an engine diaper in a long day's travel—not enough to be a huge problem, but enough to keep an eye on. So I went down into the engine room yesterday morning to change the diaper to a fresh one, and since I was only going to be down there a short minute I didn't bother putting on socks and shoes. Good thing, because when I stepped on the rubber mat that we have down the center aisle of the engine room, my foot was wet. Not hugely wet, but damp enough that it put a footprint on the dry part of the mat when I stepped forward to holler to Tim, and something I never would have noticed with shoes on. While he was working his way down, I lifted up the mat looking for the source. After a quick touch to my tongue from my finger (yes, ewwww...) I knew it was coolant not seawater. A few minutes later we discovered that a drain plug in one of the coolant pipes had shaken loose and was leaking coolant on the side of the engine and down onto the mat.

While we were sitting there, we went ahead and checked the fuel injection line nuts again, two of which seemed determined to shake loose. Not very loose mind you, 1/16 of a turn kind of loose, but this is the high pressure side of the fuel pump so it doesn't take much to lose some fuel in a place like that. The next leg will tell if we still have a problem. The Cummins 4BT3.9 engines are really reliable engines but they are notorious for shaking at lower speeds and we had to run just a bit over idle for quite a while on the way here because the following current was so strong it would have put us at the marina well before it had opened. Shaking does not encourage things to stay put.

While we were sitting there I also noticed that one of the clamps on the strainer to engine raw water intake was missing on the starboard engine and the backup clamp was pretty rusty. This led to all the clamps being checked, and a couple others being changed, something we had done not all that long ago. How we missed that missing clamp is beyond me, but it's a sinking item so it was a bit scary.

My point in telling this story is that you simply can't be too attentive when it comes to things like engine maintenance. I will often just go down there and sit for a bit looking around, not in a hurry, to see what seems out of place. In the case of boat engines, an ounce of prevention isn't worth a pound of cure, it's worth keeping many gallons of water out of the boat. And that's worth a few minutes of my time.

Learning the Loops

We rolled out of the berth just as the sun was rising. Not that we could see the sun. A dense fog had settled in, reducing visibility to three or four hundred feet. Waiting for the fog to lift was not an option as our departure time wasn't very flexible. Catching the currents going the right way in the destination marina was of prime importance and that window closed at 0930. The good news? I got me some RADAR complete with ASI and good charts, so the fog wasn't that much of a concern. Even with the current behind us we never did much more than then ten knots. The fog wasn't dense enough to make avoiding something we were approaching a problem. Anything moving in our direction resulting in a much higher closing speed would show up on the radar more than a mile away, giving us plenty of time to make for a safe pass. Running in the fog was actually kind of fun.

A tug pushing a large raft of barges through the canal was the only commercial traffic we saw in the C&D. Four sailboats took up in trail behind First Light and we passed one more along the way. The current behind us in the canal became the current on our bow as we turned north into the Delaware River. Shortly after joining the river was a turn to the SSW into the Branch Channel, home of the Delaware City Marina. That turn put a three knot current directly on our starboard side. There was a lot of online chatter about being careful when entering the Branch Channel because of that cross current. After making the turn the current moved to our bow, making docking much easier and the reason for our set departure time.

At the suggestion of Zack, who was working the docks and talking us in on the radio, we hugged the green marker at the inlet of the channel off the port side, then hugged the ferry boat on the starboard side, then idled up to the dock where he caught our line, tying us up to the fuel dock and pumpout station. Filled up and emptied out, we motored slowly down the face dock bow into the current. Zack then used the current to turn First Light around, putting us port side to the face dock and facing the exit for when we are ready to leave. It was all very low-key and pretty easy. Listening to and taking the advice of an expert is the way to go in a new situation.

The Delaware City Marina quickly climbed to the top of the list of our favorite places to dock. It is all face dock. According to Navionics the distance from our starboard side to the opposite bank is less than one hundred feet. I don't think we have been on a dock better protected than this one. Everyone working at the Marina has been friendly and professional. Another plus is the full-time mechanics on staff. We filled out a work order to have the gremlins in the Yamaha exterminated. Just a few hours later, one of the techs was at our boat pulling the cover off the outboard.

His original thought was the same as mine, some kind of fuel system problem. But after pulling the starter cord a few times I think he felt something I didn't have the experience to recognize. He plugged a spark checker in between the spark plug and its lead. Pulling on the handle produced no spark at all. No spark, no go. A few minutes later he and another tech pulled the motor off the Dink and hauled it to the shop. A little while after that we were told that a coil in the ignition system was toast. It looks like we will be here for a few days waiting for the part. It will be a more expensive stay than we had planned with several days on the dock, a maintenance bill, fuel, and pump-out. But we should leave here in good shape for the possibly challenging segments ahead. 

Yamaha Coil Lighting 68T-85533-10-00 New OEM

In the meantime, we will just enjoy this short stopover, putter around the boat some, and meet some more Loopers. So far we are finding the “Looper's community” to be as helpful and friendly as the Sailing Cruising community, though I don't know that we will make as many long time friends as we did with the Sailing Cruising community. It seems likely that the different cruising speeds of the boats will make it difficult to be in any one group for very long. At six knots First Light would seem to rank near the bottom of looper boat speeds. Then again, it also sounds like she is near the top of the list when it comes to miles per gallon. That's a trade off I can take.

We took a little tour of Chesapeake City before we left. I thought my granddaughters would get a kick out of seeing these houses that look so much like doll houses.

My grandsons would go nuts in this store. It's full of old train sets, old toy cars, antique toys of all kinds and since we played with most of them while growing up I'm guessing that means that we're antiques also.

There was an adorable little wedding chapel about a quarter the size of most of the Looper boats we've seen so far.

And a very very big chair that was just like the one I took a picture of my grandson in last summer when he was traveling with us from NC.

This one is for you Roo - I knew you'd never believe it unless I had photographic proof.

A favoring current is so amazingly sweet!

The Heroes

Any of you who have followed the blog for awhile were made aware of our good friend Mike's terrible tragedy in which he lost his wife and was badly injured. He was transported via Life Flight away from their catamaran in Staniel Cay, Bahamas, and taken to the hospital in Nassau. Later, he was transported via land medical transport back to his home in Colorado. This left one huge problem, how to get the boat back to the US to her home base.

I can't even begin to tell you how many people stepped up to the plate to offer help. Some folks guarded the boat in the anchorage so that it wouldn't get vandalized. Some took care of Mike's dog. Many many people donated to the GoFundMe effort. And many others offered their services free of charge to return the boat to NC.

In the end, it was Renee and her husband Chris of Oceanaire Yacht Delivery who brought the boat back to its home berth where it arrived yesterday. For Mike, this is a huge relief and some closure. For Renee and Chris it was a gift, a giving back, a paying forward, things that the cruising community are so wonderfully good at. And, in the end, I hope it deposits a huge ton of points in their Black Box.

So if you find yourself in need of a yacht delivery, please consider supporting these folks with your business.

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Finally

Sitting at anchor for a couple of days after First Light was lowered into the water had us take on a couple of projects while we waited on weather. The teak rails got cleaned and oiled though, truth to tell, they didn't come out looking as good as I had hoped. Better, but not good. A St. Louis project will be to (gently) sand the rails and coat them with Awlgrip Awlwood. Some LED strip lights were wired into the salon which came out looking really good when night fell. We tracked a small fuel leak in the starboard side engine that we might have finally caught and banished. Deb did a deep cleaning of the bilge to remove some very tenacious mold. Ah, but this morning...

Bye Bye Oak Harbor Marina

This morning we crawled out of the berth early, ran our pre-departure checklists, fired up the engines, hauled up the anchor, and headed down the river. Though we are thousands of miles and months away, we were headed for home. A thought that made me smile. That home lay on the other side of a new adventure and new territory for us was good for another smile.

As we cleared the river into the Bay the smile faded a bit. The wreckage of the Key Bridge was off to our port side and barely a couple of miles away. The magnitude of that disaster is hard to grasp by looking only at pictures. But looking at the container ship with parts of the bridge still draped over its bow, seeing the expanse of the bridge that fell and the cranes, barges, and boats all assembled to handle the job? Whoever is in charge of the salvage operation, and the experts gathered together to get the job done, appear to be doing a remarkable job. But it was a somber reminder of just how bad things can go when things start to go bad.

Not a terrific picture but it was very foggy

We turned away from the bridge and got about the business of moving over the water. It was a perfect day for trawler travel. And overcast sky kept the temperatures comfortable and the sunshine bearable. The winds were basically calm. About the only waves we encountered were created by the racing power boats that were out playing. A lifetime pilot and long time high performance motorcycle rider, I certainly understand the need for speed. Yet I am tempted to say some less than friendly things about those boats and drivers. Still, I suspect I would just be repeating words once spoken about me by car drivers startled by my passing them at speeds double and triple the posted speed limit, and by others who were not expecting to get buzzed by a low flying airplane, sometimes inverted, sometimes much bigger than your average “puddle jumper.” What goes around comes around I guess, so I will not begrudge the boat racers their perfect day of making obnoxious amounts of noise while creating killer wakes. I hope they had fun.

Roughly eight hours after pulling the hook out of the river where we first started our adventures many years ago in Kintala, we dropped First Light's hook it in a place we have never been. It is a tiny anchorage in Chesapeake City. We are surrounded by boats flying “Looper Flags”. Except for our disaster of a training sail years ago around Long Island, this is as far North as we have ever been on a boat. From now on, virtually every place we visit will be a place we have never visited by water before.

So day one is in the books. There is no telling what happens next. After last year's aborted attempt to make this trip we make no assumptions. Instead we will just keep going and do the best we can to handle whatever comes up. Hundreds, thousands, of people have gone this way before us. In Kintala we were often just part of the migration of cruising boats making their way south in the winter and north in the summer. Now First Light appears to be just another boat in the “Looper” migration. Having some company is a good thing.

LED light install

MV Pipe Dream a gorgeous DeFever 44. This would have been our choice had money

been no object...

I loves me some Nebo

Next Day

Looking at the wind plus tide plus likely wave height forecast, we decided to spend another night in Chesapeake City, then move on to Delaware City to top off with fuel, water, get a pump out, and see what day looks best for the run down Delaware Bay to Cape May. So with a day to spare we dropped the Dink in the water and putted over to the Dingy Dock for a look around. After spending some time chatting with another couple doing the loop we took a walk around town. After stopping for a quick lunch, along with the best cup of Coffee I've ever had, we decided to go visit the C&D Canal Museum. It was located on the other side of the Back Creek anchorage from where we were standing so we decided to putt over to in the Dink. But the Yamaha 9.9 HP 4 stroke engine that started on the first pull after being silent for months, would not start. I pulled until a blister formed on my right hand and my wrist cried “Uncle!” No luck. So we rowed back to First Light.

After fumbling around poking at this and looking at that, I tried again. It fired on the first pull, ran just fine for a few minutes, then sputtered to a stop once again. In spite of all efforts, it wouldn't start again. There is clearly a fuel issue but the filter is clean and, so far as I can tell, the remote fuel tank and hook-up is as it should be. Carburetor and fuel pump are next on the suspect list but we are at anchor. Working over the water is an invitation to loosing things in the water. There are no parts available, and the maintenance manual we found on line is nigh on to useless. So, remember all those nice things I said about the Yamaha? Yeah, forget it. It is just another outboard frustration source. Since we are going onto the dock in Delaware City the hope is we can find some kind of support to get the thing running again. Personally I'd like to use it as a spare anchor and get a motor I can trust but, a) $$$ and time, b) it would actually make for a pretty poor anchor and, c) I seriously doubt any such an outboard motor actually exists. But to live and travel on a boat means to row with the punches, so we will likely figure something out.

SPLASH

Except for one leak in the Air Con inlet screen lid First Light hit the water without a hitch. The crew pulled us out of the lift pit and tied us up to the pier, giving us all the time we wanted to poke around and make sure everything was as it should be. After looking all around for leaks I held my breath and hit the start switch for the port side engine. Less than 2 seconds of cranking later is was rumbling along at idle, all gauges in the green. That seemed like a good sign so I hit the start button on the starboard side. Same result. How about them apples? 

After letting the engines run for a while I checked that they shifted as they should. That done, we tossed the lines holding us against the lift pit pier, I started playing with the shifters, and we eased forward with a slight wind off the starboard side. It has been months since I moved the boat so the first few seconds were a little tense. I didn't touch the throttles until we were out of the marina. Even then it was just off of idle to move us out to anchor in the middle of the river. We set the anchor. Actually we set it twice having misjudged the wind. With the hook securely buried in the bottom, I climbed down from the flybridge sure something was missing. Oh yeah, anchor snubber. Snubber installed and lines secured, we just sat for a while, the boat swinging gently in the breeze. But we couldn't sit there long as there were still things to check and do.

First on the list was dropping the Dink in the water to see if there was any chance its engine would run. We were in a bit of hurry last fall and I don't think we did any of the things one is supposed to do before parking an outboard for the season. Given that our experience with outboards hasn't been all that encouraging, I was expecting the worst. The routine for dropping the Dink into the water was carefully reviewed because getting it wrong could easily lead to fingers getting squished in places fingers shouldn't be. The Dink plopped into the water without a wince. Then came remembering the routine for dropping the outboard into the water with even more consideration to not mashing fingers. Again success. All that was left was to see if the thing would start.

If I had been forced to bet on the thing starting within the next hour or so, maybe more, my bet would have been, “no chance”. On about the fourth pull the little bugger  sputtered, coughed, and then settled into an easy idle. How ABOUT them apples? The Yamaha 9.9 HP 4-stroke may be my favorite engine at this particular moment, even if it is a bit bigger and heaver than I think necessary for a Dink pusher. I gathered up my life vest, slipped the kill switch lanyard over my wrist, took the rig for a short run around the boat, and almost tossed myself into the river. I had forgotten that the twisty throttle on an outboard works backwards from the one on a motorcycle. I have about ¼ of a million miles on motorcycles. I have maybe 100 miles in a Dink. But I managed to get back on First Light without getting wet.

All that was left to get going was the genset. What were the chances that thing would run? We were batting 1000 up to that point. My experience is that batting 1000 on a boat is even rarer that batting 1000 with, well, a bat. (Actually, I have no idea where “Batting 1000” came from. I assume it is a baseball thing.) With the electrical panel set for GEN rather than “SHORE” I took a deep breath and toggled the gen switch to “Start”. Two seconds of crank, a “chuff” and another second or two of crank and the generator settled into a quiet idle, water flowing easily out of the exhaust. A look at the gauge showed a solid 120 volts AC being available. HOW ABOUT THEM APPLES!

We will be sitting here for a few days, waiting out some weather and getting our living on a boat in the water habits polished up. We are now "off the grid". Electrical power use considerations, water on board, and a constant weather watch are part of the life. We even remembered to hang our "anchor ball". (Well, Deb did.)

Mostly we are simply basking in the fact that we are back on the boat in the water. The next big step will be motoring down the river and turning left. As soon as we do we will be in new territory as this is as far north as we had ever been in Kintala. The first time we left here we turned south to start our cruising adventure. This time we will turn north on the Great Loop route. A new adventure and the first leg toward home.

Just a small change in our view. What a difference a couple hundred yards makes...

Hanging in the slings while we paint the bottom under the jack stand pads.

I realized too late that I had left my coffee cup on the boat.