Home are the sailors

I am sorry, but I miscalculted fuel use and am reposting this for the sake of correctness. We used 4.0 gal/hour and made 2.0 MPG, which is very close to our 2006 trip figures.

Over the last three days we have indeed made some tracks! First was a 70-mile day getting to Cedar Key from anchorage near Tarpon Springs. Next was the trek across the Big Bend to anchorage near St George Island, another 130 miles, arriving at 10:30 PM. Finally, today we got home from St George Island, a 104-mile run. At an average 9 miles per hour that's about 34 hours of underway time in those three days. We are a bit tired.

Overall we ran the boat 1499 miles in 50 days, about 30 miles per day on average, consumed 749 gallons of diesel fuel and racked up 185 hours on the engines. that is 4 gallons per hour and 2.0 miles per gallon. Due to the distance goals we set for each leg of our trip, we tended to run the boat at higher engine RPM than we did on our 2006 trip up the Tennessee River where we got about 2.2 MPG, and we ran into a lot rougher waters than on that trip where it was flat all the time.

Today, we ran across two trawlers that had made the run across the Big Bend the day before we did and chatted with them on the radio. I think one of them will be coming to spend a day or two at our pier.

The boat ran well with only a valve cover gasket requiring replacement on the port engine. There were no issues with the generator this trip. It was not run much because the mild weather made for comfortable sleeping without air conditioning. The air horns had a relay go bad; it was replaced. And, of course, the biggest single expense of the trip was replacement of the radar. That cost more than twice the fuel bill.

As noted above, the weather was mostly just right. We got rained on only one time, and that was at night. The only problems we had with weather was when we were sort of stuck due to winds being too high for a comfortable open water transit.

Our greatest reward was the wonderful people we met - you do meet the nicest folks when boating.

Like the bear that went over the mountain, we saw what we could see. We probably won't go over that specific mountain again, but there was talk of a trip down to and across Lake Okeechobee and then up to the St Johns River for a look see down that body of water, but first we need to get Mary to the Grand Canyon.

Hope you enjoyed the blog of out excellent adventure. This closes out this blog.