On November 10, 2021 we made the sad decision that for once and for all we had to put our boating season on hold. The boat had issues that needed to be dealt with. It was getting cold. All the other Loopers were long gone ahead of us leaving us as just about the only residents left at Alton. The water had been shut off at Alton Marina, the pool emptied, and almost all boats had been closed up for the season. And so we finally pulled the plug on 2021’s boating season and we embarked on new places and ways to spend our time until we could board Deep Thoughts again sometime in ’22.
We flew to Florida and spent two-and-a-half months there, mostly in Clearwater, but also a bit in Orlando. As of mid-February our 6 months that we are allowed to spend in the US was up. Not ready to return to Canada, we flew to the Dominican Republic for a month. Then on to Panama for seven weeks. Around the end of April we decided we were missing Canada and needed some time at home, and so back we went to Muskoka for four months.
In the meantime we were in touch regularly with the folks at Port Charles Harbor as they worked on our boat.
Finally, on September 4, 2022 we began the two-day drive back to Deep Thoughts. And on the afternoon of September 6th we finally set eyes on our lovely boat, tied to the Port Charles dock, waiting for us like a long-lost friend. I have to admit, I almost cried when I spotted her. She was so clean and more beautiful than I had remembered. A grown man getting all emotional about a boat? Yes.
A JOURNEY OF 7000 MILES
We were away for so long I forgot what it felt like to be on the boat. But within seconds it was all instantly familiar again. We didn’t know when we left in November how long we would be away. We ended up putting our Loop on hold for a total of 303 days. In that time we travelled almost 7000 miles by air and land, lived in three other countries, lived in too many hotels and AirBNB’s to count. We had some great times in all of those places, but I sort of put our time on the boat away in the back of my mind. To be honest I felt (though Charlene did not agree) that our time on Deep Thoughts had been a failure. I don’t like doing things poorly and I felt that I had not done a good job with the boat. I did not pick an experienced surveyor and we paid for it many times over fixing things he did not spot. This is on me. We were advised, especially as people with little large boat experience, to hire a top-notch surveyor to be the experienced eyes for us and I didn’t follow that advice. Instead I reasoned that it would be a good thing to give someone new to the business some experience while also saving a little bit of money. Ha! Hardly. That would be the biggest mistake of our first year of boating. I do not like the feeling of not doing things well. I don’t like being less-knowledgeable than others at something. It could be funny at times but often it was just incredibly frustrating. I underestimated the skills and knowledge I would require.
Engines Ain’t Easy
At 6’4″ and over 300 lbs., with 2 bad knees and a shoulder that prevents me from fully extending my left arm, everything hurts going down into the engine room. And often I am not completely sure what I am doing. If something is easily reachable on one engine that means you can be pretty much guaranteed that same part will be extremely difficult to access on the other as the two engines are identical. And in some situations I just can’t reach things on either engine. Charlene was wonderful and tried to squeeze into these smaller spaces, but she sometimes didn’t have the hand strength to take apart and assemble pieces. We sweated it out in the engine room together trying as hard as we could to fix issues as they came up. Through it all I don’t recall us ever taking it out on each other. We were after all in the same boat. We did what we could and worked together. So we took a lot of time off, did a lot of reading and waiting, and now we are back.
I had taken the Great Loop burgee down off the boat when we packed it in last year as it didn’t feel right to me for it to be there while we were not Looping. On September 7th, after 303 long days away, I hung the burgee on the front of the boat again, and a couple hours later we pushed off of the dock at Port Charles headed back to familiar Alton. It’s just a three-hour trip on the boat. The day was beautiful, sunny, 84 Fahrenheit (29 Celsius for the Canadians out there), calm winds and almost flat water.
Charlene and I had such a happy day on our big beautiful boat and she motored along almost effortlessly. We spotted the Clark Bridge, under which Alton Marina is located, from many miles away. I guided her in, and backed her into slip J-4, the same slip we spent so much time in last fall.
It felt like we were home again.
