Part two of Americas Great Loop

The Loop – Part 2 Alabama to GIWW

We left La by plane & took the scenic route via Chicago, Charlotte to Mobile. ??? Just walked from one terminal to another – saw airports. Lost 2 hours one way & gained 1 hour the other – all very confusing – I believed we had plenty of time for a sit down & some coffee - but no, we heard our name being paged from the boarding gate (it was OK we were there ) so we cancelled the coffee idea.

Our friends Chuck & Vicky (who we had travelled part of the last section of the loop with ) picked us up and took us to their place in Mobile where we stayed for more days than we intended. They also loaned us their car – which was invaluable.

We arrived at the marina where the boat had been for 3 months with an agreed list of jobs to be done & only 1 had been completed. There was no way we could move on to it. It was Friday & we had planned to drop our lines the following Friday.

To cut a long story short Chuck is a close friend of the owner & a few of the boat yard managers had their asses kicked because of the $#%@& ups & delays. We had work men there for the next few days getting the jobs completed. The main job was the work on the air conditioners which would be essential for travelling in the Bahamas. Boating is such fun!

Over the next few days we set about getting the boat ready – washing & polishing the hull, cleaning the wood work and all the wooden venetian blinds, anti-fouling parts of the hull, repacking clothes, cleaning the squabs, oiling the teak boarding platform, washing the mats, scrubbing the floors (after all the workmen had been - at least twice) and did 3 trips to Walmart to reprovision the boat (apparently food is expensive in the Bahamas & we were advised to stock up) and then trying to find places to store it all. I know I'll never be able to find it again. Ain't boating fun!

We were told the boat would be splashed (in the water) on Monday, then it was Tuesday , then Wednesday mid morning & we were finally dropped in at 2.00pm. Hooray ! - but no - Colin pressed the starter button & there was no response – nobody home. Various guys looked and had various opinions – batteries, (4 in total) chargers, links, meters, starter motor ??? We were now a house boat.

Thursday morning & the experts arrived early to check - and they were thorough. By mid morning they had checked & rechecked every possibility & found it was a stuffed starter motor that couldn't be repaired – a replacement was needed . That upped our bill by another $1000. But we pressed the button and got immediate motor noise. We were mobile. We stayed on the boat IN THE WATER and had a good storm to welcome us back to boating. We were due to leave with Vicky & Chuck on Friday – and it happened. We left Dog River Marina at 10.30 Friday 4^th March 2016 for the next leg of our Great Loop.