Mission Accomplished

Marathon Harbor, N24 42W81 05

February 12, 2006
Well we accomplished a major family-oriented milestone. We just came back from a 6 day trip to Georgia to attend David’s graduation from infantry school. This event has been driving our planning for months. Libby especially has been missing David because she hasn’t seen him in a year. I at least got to see David in Fairbanks last October.

We rented a car at the Marathon Airport last Tuesday, left Tarwathie tied to a mooring and headed north. It is more than 600 miles (1000 km) from here to Fort Benning Georgia. It took us two (easy) days to drive it. We found a back road on the map (Route 27) that took us through central Florida away from all the population centers. We avoided Miami and Tampa and Orlando and Jacksonville.

The most interesting part of the trip was the stretch between Florida City up to Lake Okeechobee. That stretch is part of the Florida everglades. It is flat and mostly featureless, but close inspection shows most of the land to be marshes, open water, fields and forests. Along the road there is also a host of very impressive farms. We saw hundred acre tomato fields, also corn, potato, strawberry, pineapple, palm tree, sugar beet and sugar cane, and tropical plant fields. The fields are enormous and appear to be very productive. It is easy to understand how much of America’s food is grown here.

We stopped to look out at Lake Okeechobee. It is a peculiar lake, very shallow but very big. It must be 50 miles across and only 3-4 feet deep in most places. There are huge levees between the lake and the road, so there are no lakeside houses or camps. We stopped and climbed one of the levees to see the lake. From the top of the levee to the lake surface it must be 40 feet. The lake level is reported to be very high, nearly to flood level. That makes it puzzling why they need an additional 40 feet high levee to hold it in. Maybe the lake sloshes a lot from one side to the other. I have no idea. There are gates in the levee that open to let boats in and out. All the boats and marinas are on the land side of the levee. Very strange.

North of Okeechobee, one comes to orange country. For the next 100 miles, the road is lined with orange groves on both sides of the road. The groves continue as far as the eye can see. Each tree is heavy with fruit. I saw a parking lot with perhaps 3 dozen tanker trucks for carrying orange juice. Each truck could carry 8,000 gallons. If I were on the fire department here, I would enlist those tankers to help fight fires. Imagine putting out a structure fire with orange juice.


Up in Georgia, the foliage changes from tropical to temperate species. We saw huge groves of pecan trees. Pecan trees are much larger than I imagined. We traveled through Plains Georgia and saw President Jimmy Carter’s house by the side of the road. He didn’t invite us in for lunch though.

Mid afternoon on Wednesday, we arrived at Fort Benning and holed up in a motel for the night. We also went shopping for a printer to keep onboard Tarwathie. Reading the cruising guides about the customs requirements of Latin countries convinced me that we should have an inexpensive copier/printer. It also scans, so I can convert a lot of Tarwathie’s paper manuals to a digital CD.
On Thursday, we were joined by my son John and his son Nick. They drove down from New York. Their trip took 18 hours of driving. We left immediately for Fort Benning and happily watched David and his company go through their “bluing” ceremony. This is where the trainees are awarded the blue cord to wear on their shoulder to identify them as infantrymen. (See the following blog article. I have a lot to say about Dave in the military). The only thing marring the ceremony is that the weather turned cold and we had no jackets. Poor Libby shivered so violently that a woman in the crowd took off her coat and offered it to Libby.

After the ceremony Dave was free for 6 hours, so the five us out set out to enjoy each other’s company. We went to 2/12/06a military equipment store, Ranger Joe’s. Then we went to a pizza restaurant and ate pizza and talked for a few hours. It was great. We returned Dave to his barracks at 1930.

Friday morning was the actual graduation ceremony. (See the following blog article, “In Harm’s Way”) The weather was nicer and the ceremony was very moving. We were all glad that we took the trouble to go there. After graduation, Dave rejoined his unit for transportation to the airport. We drove to the airport independently, and met Dave there. We were able to spend another hour or so just enjoying each other’s company. Finally we had to leave to go our separate directions, Alaska, New York and Florida. It was a melancholy moment for us because Libby and I won’t see any of them again for months or perhaps years.

We left the airport and drove to Milledgeville, GA to spend the night. Early Saturday morning I went to the Milledgeville library to take my written exams to get a HAM license. I took (and passed) the exams for technician level and for the general level licenses. However I still haven’t finished learning Morse Code so I wasn’t ready to take the code test. Morse Code is required for the general level HAM license and that is required to use the HAM frequencies in Asia, Africa, and Europe. I’ll try to take the code test in Hawaii or Alaska. Anyhow, I’ll have my technician level HAM license now and I’ll be able to buy and use the equpiment to do email using the SSB radio onboard Tarwathie. That’s critical to be able to keep in touch with family and friends, not to mention posting blogs, while at sea.

So we spent the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday driving back to Marathon. Along the way we did several chores on our to-do list. With the graduation complete, our focus must now turn toward getting ready to depart for Belize, then Panama, Hawaii, and Alaska. This is the big one coming up.