Start of the Great American Loop on Endorphin Voyager

David Bellamy took this picture as we were leaving the dock for one year!

12/31/2019
    We celebrated New Years Eve on our boat in Baytown Marina, Sandestin, Florida, toasting to the beginning of a new year and new adventures!  Last details to fix this week include: getting the new AIS system to work, this will provide our boat to identify other boats on the water, and just as importantly, for other boats to be able to “see” and identify us! This will be very important on the river systems, especially when we will encounter big ships and barges. We changed the lighting on the fly bridge, to include mult-colors, which is very pretty.  We had the oil changed, the bottom cleaned, we bought a new oil pump, grocery shopping, one more trip to West Marine and took our golf cart over to Terry and Cliff’s new condo!

1/05/2019
     Finally ready to go!  We left the marina around 11:00 am, feeling mixed emotions of excitement and nervousness!  Are we going to be able to do this? Complete the journey? Are we going to like this new lifestyle?  Is Karl really going to be able to relax a little, after keeping a very heavy load of work, meetings, schedules and responsibilities for the last 41years?  We know that the boating life will be challenging and enjoyable as well!
     We decided to travel on the ICW, due to windy conditions on the ocean.  We were merely 10 miles into the trip when our first “challenge” began.  The high water alarm went off, indicating there was some sort of leakage in the bilge!  This could potentially sink our boat! Karl went down in the engine room and found that the starboard engine’s dripless shaft was spraying water all over the engines. Karl could not fix it at the time, but  we found that if we continued on a slow speed of 8 knots, it did not leak, so we decided to press on, hoping that maybe it would reseal itself as we go.  We anchored for the night in a beautiful little cove, Pearl Bayou, in St.Andrews Bay outside of Panama City.  Most all of the marinas in Panama City were still closed, due to the destruction of hurricane Michael, which hit the panhandle in mid-October.
     Karl immediately got to work in the engine room and managed to tighten the dripless shaft, just a few millimeters would hopefully make the difference!  We would not know until the next day if it would work.  We finally settled in for the night, but the anchor light did not work! We had to ducktape a lantern to it! The lantern was one of our many thoughtful gifts that our co-workers gave us  for a send-off.  It really did light us up that night!
     The challenges were not over for the first day, because during the middle of the night, the carbon monoxide detector went off, sending a very loud obnoxious beeping sound to wake us up!  The phone rang, telling us about the warning to seek fresh air!  We jumped out of bed, grabbed Salty, our dog, and opened all the windows and got outside.  We had kept our generator on, so we immediately turned it off.  We have Diesel engines, which are not as hazardous for carbon monoxide buildup as gasoline engines, but still knew that the potential was there, because it has actually happened before when the elbow on the generator leaked.  Eventually things settled down, the alarm quieted, and we tried to go back to sleep with windows open, etc.
     The next morning, Karl worked on the generator, looking for signs of leakage.  He couldn’t find any indications of a leak.  After debating about what the next step would be, we decided to keep going, hoping that the leakage was detected because it was such a calm, still night and the carbon monoxide did escape under the boat, causing the alarm to go off.  Nevertheless, the alarm may have saved our lives, so we learned another valuable lesson, we will not sleep with the generator on!
     1/6/2019
     We had a great trip over to Carrabelle on the ICW.  The dripless shafts were not leaking, so Karl’s fix worked and we could return to normal speed.  We decided to go slow, because we were so amazed at the destruction that the hurricane had upon this area.  It was so evident in the trees being down, cut down like they were toothpicks.  We saw so many blue tarps on houses, still waiting to get new roofs.
The storm was devastating to this area.
     The Moorings marina in Carrabelle is operational and has fuel, but suffered a lot of damage to the docks.  Several boats were damaged as well.