Welcome to Daydream's Great Loop Blog!

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's) planning and preparation for cruising the Great Loop, and once on the water, our cruising adventures!

THE GREAT LOOP

The Great Loop is a circumnavigation of the eastern United States and usually includes some cruising in Canadian waters as well. There are various routes illustrated on this map from Capt. John's website, a great free resource on the Great Loop (map used with permission). 

Map of Great Loop

Our Great Loop cruise will start in Florida around April 1, 2017, and go up the East Coast on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway to New York and the Hudson River. We'll enter the eastern end of the Erie Canal and then turn north to Lake Ontario via the Oswego Canal. After going around the eastern end of Lake Ontario, we will cruise the Trent-Severn Canal, Georgian Bay and the North Channel in Canada. We will then re-enter the U.S. and cruise the eastern shore of Lake Michigan to Chicago. We'll next cruise the inland rivers from Chicago to Mobile, and finally return to Florida on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, which among Loopers is called "crossing your wake"! We anticipate "crossing our wake" in approximately eight months.

We will cruise the entire Great Loop without ever taking Daydream out of the water! This is made possible by many locks along the route. Nearly every waterway we will cruise has locks, ranging from the big Army Corps of Engineers locks on the inland rivers, to the 100 year old small locks on the Erie Canal.

WHO WE ARE
We are Pat and Patty Anderson from Birch Bay, Washington. Birch Bay is just below the Canadian border about 4 miles west of I-5. Pat retired three years ago after 31 years as the Snoqualmie City Attorney, but worked part time for a small municipal firm after retiring from the City, finally retiring once and for all at the end of 2016! Patty is a retired substitute teacher.

Pat Whacking the Wily Crab

Patty on the Cockpit at Matia Cove

We bought our Birch Bay home in 1989 as a vacation retreat. At the end of 2013, we moved the "beachy" stuff out, moved the "regular" stuff in, and moved in full time. The first thing we did was to build a big garage for Daydream! The garage also has a 150 square foot finished craft room for Patty and a 150 square foot finished office / music studio for Pat, where Pat makes multi-tracked ocarina-guitar music videos for his YouTube channel!

We will be accompanied by our 10 year old Lhasa Apso, Baxter! Baxter is an experienced boat dog, having cruised since puppyhood with us in the San Juan Islands, and all four times on Lake Powell in Utah, where he is affectionately known as "Dog of the Desert"!

Baxter Barrett Anderson, Dog of the Desert

Up until now, we have mainly cruised the San Juan Islands and Canadian Gulf Islands, a couple of trips to Princess Louisa Inlet, a great trip to the Idaho lakes Priest and Pondereille, and our four trips to our favorite place of all, Lake Powell. In 2006 Pat cruised from Blaine, WA, to Ketchikan, Alaska, with a friend and Patty flew in to cruise Misty Fjords National Monument.

We love anchoring in secluded little coves in the San Juans and chasing the wily crab! We love coffee in the morning and sundowners in the evening in the cockpit with classical guitar music playing on the Bose SoundLink Mini! We love swinging on the hook with the water gently lapping at the hull lulling us to sleep!

We are diehard C-Brats, the website for C-Dory people. We hosted the 2015 and 2016 CBGT (C-Brat Get-Together) at Squalicum Harbor in Bellingham. Before C-Brats, there was C-DOGS (C-Dory Owners Group). Two guys broke a few silly rules, got kicked out of C-DOGS (hence "Brats"), and started C-Brats, which grew and grew while C-DOGS withered away and died! As of today, there are 7,356 registered users of C-Brats. We are C-Brats #62. Pat has (as of today) 7,516 posts on C-Brats! Our friend Brock remember's Pat's first post: "I don't know when, I don't know how, but one day I WILL have a C-Dory!"

DAYDREAM

Daydream is a trailerable 2005 C-Dory 25 Cruiser, with a Honda BF150 main and a Honda BF15 kicker. Our prior boat was a 2003 C-Dory 22 Cruiser, also named Daydream. We didn't know we needed a new boat but then we went to the 2005 Seattle Boat Show!

Daydream at Tombolo Cove, Decatur Island

For what it's worth, Daydream was named after Sir Percy Blakeney's yacht, The Daydream, from our favorite movie, the 1982 Anthony Andrews - Jane Seymour made-for-TV movie The Scarlet Pimpernel!

Patty liked the 25 a whole lot at the boat show, not just for the enclosed head, but for its overall extra elbow room. It had a windlass, trim tabs, and a Wallas stove/heater as standard equipment that were extra cost options in 2003. And the price was considerably lower than it had been in 2003. When she said "Well, let's just go over and see what the deal is," I knew I was getting a new boat!

Daydream has a vee-berth, a dinette, a galley and a fully enclosed head. We have full canvas for the cockpit, so it is in effect an extra room. It will be tiny compared to the 40' trawlers on the Great Loop, but it has everything we need!









Baxter is a real "dinghy" dog!