Satellite Beach to Traverse Bay

Ok, perhaps you're wondering why we would tow the trailer back home to Florida and leave the Rossie (as they're affectionately known) up in Michigan. Simple. Since we still have a good month or two before chilly/drizzly weather arrives then why not take advantage of the indian summer weather patterns and bring Pecan home via the connected waterways of Canada and the US. James has decided to join us for part of the journey--he needs to be back on campus on the 15th of September. Mike needs to be back at the end of August so we'll coincide the start of this journey with getting him back to school first.

We arrived back in Traverse Bay on Augsut 29th, Saturday morning, after 2011 miles of driving our one-way Hertz rental SUV since leaving Satellite Beach on Tuesday, August 25th. After dropping Mike back to school for his senior year at Penn in Philadelphia and we also stopped along the way in Fairfax, Virginia for a visit with Rich's Mom, and in Rochester Hills, Michigan for a visit with Tamara's grandmother, Aunt Patty, Uncle Jim and cousin Sheila.


I made this six foot fenderboard for use on Pecan when going thru the locks up in Canada. Here you can see the board tied to the roof rack on the Hertz rental SUV.
Based on a forecast for rain this weekend, we canceled our plans for Northport Bay Boat Yard to move Pecan out of inside storage for the weekend so we could put anti-fouling, flush the water tanks, and generally get the boat loaded and sorted out. Fortunately, the boatyard allowed up to work inside on Saturday to get some work done on her.


NOAA chart snippet showing Northport


Pecan is inside the storage shed noted by the "X".


James outside storage shed at Northport Bay Boat Yard on a rainy day.


We arrived at the boatyard at noon on Saturday and promptly got started with cleaning the hull bottom of any waterline scum and dirt and masking the boottop. We then started rolling on a coat of Micron CSC anti-fouling paint. While the can says the paint is white as you can see from the photos it actually applies as light gray--fine with us.


More work underneath Pecan.


Masking tape just removed the freshly painted bottom. Pecan is all ready for launching on Monday, weather permitting!