June 30 to July 28, 2007

June 30 to July 28 – Well for the last month I have been visiting with friends, spending time on Shorty and organizing the charts and all for the last leg of the journey to Crystal River, FL. I have been living under my concrete shade tree long enough and been studying the weather along the leg ahead and made the decision to move closer to the end and if a hurricane does approach I can always go to plan B which is to load Shorty on a trailer and move him inland until the hurricane passes. I was going to wait for September or October before I started south but if I did I may as well store him here at Green Turtle Bay and go home. But that is not easy either because I would miss the boat and all the friends here as well. There are several people here who are going south a little later in the year and some have started now. The sailboat named Molly Inez left the other day headed for Curacao in the Caribbean by way of the Florida Keys, Bahamas and etc. Another is preparing to leave this fall for Corpus Christi, TX and around the other side of the Gulf of Mexico. I have been here long enough that it is time to take the Velcro off the dock and start moving again. Seeing people leave for their destinations makes me want to make my way toward mine. They have been really nice to me here at Green Turtle Bay at Grand Rivers, KY. There have been quite a few people on the Great Loop Cruise who are staying here awhile and then moving further south as far as Mobile, AL to see what the weather does. I have been doing some day trips while I have been here to see places that I have worked at along the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers because the Marina has a courtesy car. I have introduced some of the people to Barkley Lodge which is 30 miles by river and about the same by car. This is a beautiful state owned lodge and park and marina on the Cumberland River. Others have gone up the Cumberland to Nashville, TN and said I was right when I told them it would be a nice trip. The geese that were sporting down now have their feathers and are stretching there wings to fly. The Turtle Lady brings her day school group down to the place where I am moored and lets the children feed the turtles bread they get from the restaurant above me. Every morning when I wake up Herman the Heron is sitting on the dock in front of me fishing for his morning meal in the pastel light of dawn and working with the fish he catches until he gets them turned around and can swallow them head first. Some friends took me and others along to a bay just up the way called Smith Bay on Kentucky Lake which is a refuge and closed during parts of the year for the Bald Eagles who have their nests there in some old dead trees. One in particular can be viewed from the boat and it has two eaglets that are busy making their parents supply them with food. One has already started to get its white head and the other is just brown feathered. I don’t know whether it is true or not but someone said they will be three years old when they start to get the white feathered head, this is something I will research later after the trip is over. It has been as always a very serene and thoughtful time when I have been tied up for a while. In some ways it is much like being in a monastery where you can be alone with your thoughts and being without TV and newspapers for most of the time helps a person not to become so involved in all of the trials and tribulations of this world but see life in a much simpler way. Of course it is hard because of the internet and cell phones and all not to be connected to the world outside but there is much more time to just be alone with your thoughts. I can see why writers will just go off somewhere to write a novel or book where they are not bothered by anyone