Pamela Gibson

As most of you have figured out by now, this isn’t a travelogue. It’s a personal journey, a peak into the psyche of a scared spouse who “wasn’t sure she wanted to go, but set aside her fears and went anyway.”  So you won’t hear about all the places we visited on our way up … Read more

This is not about Ernest Hemingway, although he lived in Florida and would understand why this phrase applies to this post. We left Fort Myers and headed for the Okeechobee Waterway, a 135-mile trip across the center of Florida, using rivers, a lake, and canals. We made it through five locks and turned northward in … Read more

(2015 America’s Great Loop Memoir) After our foggy adventure from Carrabelle, Fla. to Tarpon Springs, we had a good night’s sleep then hauled up the anchor the next day and made the short trip to Clearwater where we looked forward to a few days of rest in a marina. Clearwater, Fla. is where in 1982 … Read more

Saga of Skinny Ditches If you’ve cruised, you know narrow channels are marked with red and green buoys or numbered placards and you stay well inside them. They mark the limits of the dredged channel so you don’t run aground. On the West Coast water’s pretty deep most places. In the Gulf, people walk a … Read more

Getting the Boat Ready The year we made a decision to move onto the boat, we knew our previous three-month summer cruise in the Pacific Northwest would give us a good idea of what the boat needed. When we ended the trip, we sharpened our pencils and made a list. Then we shipped the boat … Read more