Great Loop Chronicles Part 14
Marine
- Sponsor
- OPTIMA Batteries
- Location
- Iuka, MS
The Great Loop Chronicles will be an ongoing series, following the travels of OPTIMA Batteries staffer, Jim McIlvaine, as he travels America's Great Loop, a 6000+ nautical mile journey around the Eastern United States.
With the boat parts having been ordered and the weekend approaching, we now sit back, play the waiting game and engage in some of the sightseeing portion of the Great Loop experience. I'm sure some may wonder how I fit on the bed at 7'1 and the easy answer is decently enough to sleep. Truthfully, I hadn't been sleeping much in the main berth until we arrived at Iuka, because the custom queen mattress was on the thin side and ended up hurting my hips as a side sleeper. The mattresses on boats of this size are advertised as "queen" or "full," but they generally have the corners trimmed off, so it's usually not a "true" queen mattress. However, the padded headboard is not vertical, but at a slight angle, which adds at least another six inches. I can put pillows on that and I'm basically at a king mattress length. We ordered a gel mattress topper that arrived at Aqua Yacht and it's been a comfortable night's sleep ever since...at least until nature calls.
As a man in his 50s and a person who only eats one meal a day (typically dinner), I find myself no longer able to sleep through the night, without getting up at least once for the bathroom. I'm doing my very best not to fill up our holding tanks, so I opt for a long walk to the bathrooms on shore. It's a comfortable enough walk in a sweatshirt and shorts, but by the time I return to the boat, I'm basically awake. At that point, my mind starts thinking about the Loop. The stress of our anchorage on Guntersville is still lingering with me to a surprising degree, but I'm also thinking about where we will stop next, how many more locks do we need to get through, will the math work to get us to Pass Christian in time for the OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car series weekend?
Through the modern miracle of Starlink, I find myself taking a few pillows to the rather comfortable couch in the main salon and turning on the TV to disengage my brain from Great Loop thoughts. It would be easy enough to turn on a movie that would distract me back to sleep, but I don't want to take the chance of either of the kids waking up and walking into the room, right when Doc Holliday shoots Johnny Ringo. What could I turn on that was kid safe? Thank you Bob Ross channel! That ASMR of Bob scraping the canvas with some Thalo Blue does the trick every time!
Thanks to the use of the courtesy car, Gwendolyn has been taking the kids to see some of the local sights, including the Civil War museum/battlefield at Corinth/Shiloh, a Coca-Cola museum and Woodall Mountain, which may be the highest point in Mississippi. I've been working through the weekend, so I can bank some time to pilot the boat during the week, once we're back underway. We also made a trip into Iuka, so I could do laundry, while Gwendolyn and the kids had lunch. Sunday night, the Dixons invited us over to their boat to watch March Madness.
I'm quickly learning the boating community is as friendly and welcoming a group as you could hope to encounter. The Dixons were great hosts and for those who didn't see the game, it came down to the wire and our reaction at the end was probably heard around the entire marina! It also led us to being introduced to another wonderful couple, who were beyond generous with us! Find out about their generosity here.
With the boat parts having been ordered and the weekend approaching, we now sit back, play the waiting game and engage in some of the sightseeing portion of the Great Loop experience. I'm sure some may wonder how I fit on the bed at 7'1 and the easy answer is decently enough to sleep. Truthfully, I hadn't been sleeping much in the main berth until we arrived at Iuka, because the custom queen mattress was on the thin side and ended up hurting my hips as a side sleeper. The mattresses on boats of this size are advertised as "queen" or "full," but they generally have the corners trimmed off, so it's usually not a "true" queen mattress. However, the padded headboard is not vertical, but at a slight angle, which adds at least another six inches. I can put pillows on that and I'm basically at a king mattress length. We ordered a gel mattress topper that arrived at Aqua Yacht and it's been a comfortable night's sleep ever since...at least until nature calls.
As a man in his 50s and a person who only eats one meal a day (typically dinner), I find myself no longer able to sleep through the night, without getting up at least once for the bathroom. I'm doing my very best not to fill up our holding tanks, so I opt for a long walk to the bathrooms on shore. It's a comfortable enough walk in a sweatshirt and shorts, but by the time I return to the boat, I'm basically awake. At that point, my mind starts thinking about the Loop. The stress of our anchorage on Guntersville is still lingering with me to a surprising degree, but I'm also thinking about where we will stop next, how many more locks do we need to get through, will the math work to get us to Pass Christian in time for the OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car series weekend?
Through the modern miracle of Starlink, I find myself taking a few pillows to the rather comfortable couch in the main salon and turning on the TV to disengage my brain from Great Loop thoughts. It would be easy enough to turn on a movie that would distract me back to sleep, but I don't want to take the chance of either of the kids waking up and walking into the room, right when Doc Holliday shoots Johnny Ringo. What could I turn on that was kid safe? Thank you Bob Ross channel! That ASMR of Bob scraping the canvas with some Thalo Blue does the trick every time!
Thanks to the use of the courtesy car, Gwendolyn has been taking the kids to see some of the local sights, including the Civil War museum/battlefield at Corinth/Shiloh, a Coca-Cola museum and Woodall Mountain, which may be the highest point in Mississippi. I've been working through the weekend, so I can bank some time to pilot the boat during the week, once we're back underway. We also made a trip into Iuka, so I could do laundry, while Gwendolyn and the kids had lunch. Sunday night, the Dixons invited us over to their boat to watch March Madness.
I'm quickly learning the boating community is as friendly and welcoming a group as you could hope to encounter. The Dixons were great hosts and for those who didn't see the game, it came down to the wire and our reaction at the end was probably heard around the entire marina! It also led us to being introduced to another wonderful couple, who were beyond generous with us! Find out about their generosity here.