Pat and Patty Anderson, of Birch Bay, Washington, are now well on their way toward completing the Great Loop on Daydream, their C-Dory 25, with their ten-year-old Lhasa Apso, Baxter. In fact, they’re now in Demopolis, Alabama, heading back down to where they started on April 1 in La Belle, Florida, on the Okeechobee Waterway.
What is even more remarkable than the fact that they’ve come this far on their 12-year-old C-Dory, one of the smaller craft on the Loop, is the reaction of other people to their voyage. So far, the Andersons have had about 54,000 page views on their blog, daydreamsloop.blogspot.com, a very impressive number.
I think that their popularity is certainly due in part because the Andersons are genuinely nice people (he’s a retired lawyer; she’s a former substitute school teacher), and they have a cute dog. But it’s more than that. The blog is thorough and personal with an engaging you-are-there sensitivity. But I also think it’s because most of us love to root for the underdog, to cheer for the little guy. Reading about the Andersons, we can feel, by God, if they can do it, so can I.
Before the Andersons bought Daydream at the Seattle boat show, they had a 2003 C-Dory 22. The new 25 was more than a step up in size; it opened new cruising grounds. They cruised extensively in the San Juans and the Gulf Islands on the 25, and even went up the Inside Passage to Alaska. After that, an eight-month cruise on the Great Loop seemed very possible. It also fit their budget. Anderson wrote that their choice of boat for the Loop was dictated by the fact that they owned Daydream “free and clear.” He added that “it will be tiny compared to the 40’ trawlers in the Great Loop, but it has everything we need.”
Daydream is powered by a single 150-hp Honda outboard, with a 15-hp Honda kicker, and it cruises at 16-18 knots. The forward V-berth is 6’ 4” long, which is comfortable for both of them. The main cabin is 9 feet long with 6’ 10” headroom. The Andersons heat water on a large tea kettle on a single propane burner, and they have a Magma barbeque on a rail in the cockpit.
For showers, when they’re anchored out, they use a Helio Pressure Shower; it has a two-gallon tank, a seven-foot hose and a foot pump for pressure. They put a gallon of cold water into the tank and then add hot water from the tea kettle. To keep food cold, they have an ARB 50-quart fridge/freezer, which is mounted on a slide-out tray under the galley counter. For a dinghy, they bought a Sea Eagle inflatable kayak, which is stable and weighs only 32 pounds so they launch and retrieve it easily.
All this works, and gives the Andersons the cruise of a lifetime. “We love coffee in the morning and sundowners in the evening in the cockpit,” Anderson wrote. “We love swinging on the hook with the water gently lapping at the hull, lulling us to sleep.”
To read more, go to their blog:http://daydreamsloop.blogspot.com
