To: ALL Interested Parties

SMELLIN da ROSES, Part 3-a.

This is the first log of the TWO J's V third boating season of our America's Great Loop Cruise.

For those not familiar with this boating adventure of a lifetime (did not receive previous year's logs), the "Great Loop", as it is often referred to, is a circumnavigation around the Eastern half of the United States and Canada. During our first summer 2002, we cruised 1935 statute miles from the Chesapeake Bay up the East Coast, Hudson River, through the Canadian Heritage canals and waterways, and down Lake Huron and into Lake Erie. Last Summer, 2003 we cruised 3,557 miles from Lake Erie up Lake Huron, into Lake Superior, down Lake Michigan and the Heartland Rivers, East on the Gulf ICW, across the Gulf of Mexico and the Okeechobee Waterway to Ft. Pierce, FL.

If you did not receive our logs and Howard and Maggie Daniels' digital photo's from the first two legs of our Great Loop Cruise and would like to catch up and/or refresh your memory, please log onto our web site at: <http://homepage.mac.com/twojscom/GreatLoop/>.

This Spring we will depart from Ft. Pierce about 19 April to head back up the Intercoastal Waterway and the Chesapeake Bay to our home slip at the Sassafras Harbor Marina in Georgetown, MD. We plan a side trip on the St. Johns River and several stops along the way to see some of the things we did not see on our two previous trips down the ICW to Charleston, SC and St. Augustine, FL aboard the Marge's Barge. This years trip will only be about 1,200 to 1,400 miles and take about 6 to 7 weeks (home by the first week in June).

Once our America's Great Loop Cruise is completed, we will have earned the coveted "BaccaLOOPerate Degree" given by the America's Great Loop Cruisers Association.

If you would like to continue being on our joint Email list to receive our trip logs, you need to do nothing. If you do not wish to receive them, please do not feel bad about asking us to take your name off the list. If you are forwarding the logs to others, please continue to do so, but we would appreciate knowing to whom you are sending them, to avoid duplication. Last year we Emailed logs to about 60 people, but understand that almost 100 people received them. We hope those who receive the logs via Email or read them in the SHM office enjoy them.


TWO J's V -- John and Judy Gill