Apr 11 – Wed
Today we moved from New Smyrna to Palm Coast Florida.
The ride to Palm Coast was pretty uneventful, but as we got closer to Palm Coast, the houses got much nicer with huge lanai’s. Each home also had their own boathouse & lift. The ICW looked funny with all the boat houses lining the river.
We docked at The Palm Coast Marina.
Due to the weather delays in New Smyrna, we will stay only one night in Palm Coast.
So here is our 1 afternoon/night review.
The marina is nice but not glamorous. It has a nice outdoor area with lounge chairs to chill out at. It also has individual bath houses with shower/toilet/sink all in the same room – most marinas have separate shower rooms.
Similar to New Smyrna, the folks are really nice. We must have had 5 different people stop by to say hi when they saw the AGLCA flag on the bow & the Michigan home port on the stern of the boat.
The marina is just off the ICW in a nice tree-lined protected cove. The winds were again high on the ICW (25mph) but nice and calm in the marina harbor.
The surrounding resort was very nice.
We had to walk thru the resort to the curvy road main drag, where we walked about a 1/4 mile to a place called The European Village.
The European Village was an area with, guess what – shops, restaurants, pubs, etc.
The European Village did appear to have a bit of a European look, with tall exterior walls of condos & the restaurants/shops/pubs lining the interior perimeter of the town square. The village had a wide variety of foods from different ethnicities.
Due to budgetary constraints, and the fact that we spent at lot of $$ at the New Smyrna restaurants, we settled for pizza at an Italian place called Mezzaluna.
The ambiance was pretty good (they had the mandatory photo of the Rat Pack), the pie was just “OK”.
Next Stop = St Augustine Florida
It is supposed to be a great city, and founded in 1565, is reported as the oldest European settlement that is still inhabited in the United States.
We will be there for 1 week.
gettinlooped2017.com 
Have you kept a log of your nights at anchor and in marinas? Fuel Burn and costs? Would love to know your stats on this to date. Thanks
LikeLike
Greg,
We have all the data but not organized so well yet.
Will try to pull it together for a status update.
Fuel costs so far have been about $11,342 , about 1mpg @ 9-10mph, about 3000 gallons, ave cost = $3.75/gal (gasoline for us, diesel is much cheaper) , about 3000 miles.
When complete, we expect the totals to be :
Fuel – estimated
6000 miles
6000 gallons
$3.75/gal (ave)
$22,500 dollars
Marina fees = about 360 nights x $90 = $32,400
We anchor out very infrequently, only about 10 times so far
Food = 360 days x $100 day = $36,000
keep in mind, we would have spent some of this total at a boring home in Royal Oak
We will post the exact totals at the end of The Loop
LikeLike
Thanks so much for the update. Your tracking very closely to what we have for our budget with anchoring out the only way to reduce the costs. We begin our adventure and fall down the loop next fall. Enjoy and be safe. The LOCKs are next.
LikeLike
Have fun in St Augustine. You wil love it my aunt and uncle live there.
LikeLike
Thx Chris
Tell Jaime Hi !
LikeLike
Mike, you will need to write a “Looper’s Guidebook” when you are done with this trip. Great and interesting stuff.
LikeLike
Thx a bunch Joe
Appreciate your comments, and ongoing interest in our trip
LikeLike