This morning we got up and left our wall in the Dismal Swamp headquarters and continued along our way up the canal. We traveled for a few hours not seeing anything but mossy green water covered with a layer of slime!!!! We finally made it to the other lock.
We had to wait about an hour until the next scheduled opening so we tied up alongside the sea wall. That gave a Richard time to jump off and buy a fresh cantaloupe from a roadside vendor and run to Hardee’s for lunch. He came back with chocolate shakes. A welcome cool drink on a hot day!!
After our wait, we made it thru the lock with no problems. The lock master was super friendly. It had been several days since another boat passed through. We are finally out of the green water!!!!
We continued on and got to Chesapeake VA and decided to go on to Norfolk VA and there we will stay for a few days to rest. We got safely tied up at a nice marina in downtown Norfolk within walking distance to many shops and restaurants. We walked to a restaurant for dinner tonight.
Captains Update:
Hello all. I thought I would share a few fun facts about our trip to date. We left our home in Miramar Beach on January 18th 2021. We intended to complete the Great Loop that year. COVID had other ideas and we had to delay our plans to go north because of the Canadian border closer.
However, we still had a great time with our destinations in The Keys, Bahamas and Charleston SC. In September, we traveled back south and wintered GloriaUs near Ft. Lauderdale with plans to start again in January 2022.
We arrived back as planned and headed to the Keys for February and March. We spent April in the Abacos and returned to Florida in early May.
After a brief trip home and several frustrating weeks delay attempting yet another repair to our frig/freezer system, we headed north again. We’ve decided to spend some time exploring the Chesapeake over the summer. In late September we’ll haul out GloriaUs for the winter in Maryland. We plan to jump back on board Spring 2023 and complete the balance of the loop (unless we change our plans again).
Some Fun Facts:
We have pulled into port or anchor at 103 different spots along our journey. We have traveled 4,678 total miles with 2,026 unique miles along the Great Loop route. So we are about 1/3 complete.
Our top three expenses are Maintenance & Repairs for GloriaUs, Marina Fees, and Fuel.
Our average per overnight marina cost is $107. Dawn and I prefer marinas so we don’t anchor out a lot.
We’ve purchased 3,803 gallons of diesel at a cost of $17,773 or an average of $4.67 per gallon and 1.23mpg.
Life on board M/V GloriaUs 