Final Post- Stats and a quick review of Canada take 1

I bet everyone thought I forgot about stats!. Didn't forget- just the holidays got in the way....I do hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and 2024 is treating you well.

Onto Stats: We took a boating trip to Useppa island this week and ran into every kind of weather possible- except warmth. But it was a great time as Useppa is a special island. But really, the reason for mentioning it is that when you have that kind of weather, on a 6 hour journey, you have time to put stats together...

First, the map--- I cleaned it up.. There is now a legend and each color represents a segment of our trip. I also just thought it looked cool in Google Earth..

Blue : 06/03/2020 - 07/12/2020

-When we made the decision to start this crazy journey. Although, destination was only VT at that point.

Red: 08/10/2020-08/15 2020

-Hard to see- when we went back to pick up the boat, we couldn't finish in July due to broken lock on Champlain Canal. It is also where we hit the "ROCK". hence Red!!

Yellow: 08/19/2022-09/24/2022

-Canada take 1. It ended out becoming a triangle loop back to VT.

Purple: 05/26/2023- 07/06/2023

-Canada take 2- successful run to Petoskey

Brown: 09/09/2023 - 09/30/2023

-Lake Michigan to Chicago- with a backtrack to Mackinac Island

Green: 10/15/2023-12/07/2023

-Home Stretch. Chicago back to Sarasota

Black: 08/25, 26 2020 and 05/31/ 2023

-You can't see it, but it's Montreal. It is the only place we stayed twice on the entire trip.

So, How did all that equate in numbers? Here we go for what we have...

Total Miles

1. Blue: East Coast. 1569 Miles - 13 Locks

2. Red: NY-Vermont. 285 Miles- 12 Locks

3. Yellow: Ca take 1. 644.4 Miles -99 Locks

4. Purple: Ca take 2. 999.2 Miles. - 58 Locks

5. Brown: Lake M 543.6 Miles - 4 Locks

6. Green: Home St 1775.5 Miles- 29 Locks- sure felt like a lot more 😅😵‍💫

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Total. 5818.10 Miles. 211 Locks

I really tried to find the extra 200 Miles to get to 6,000. It’s probably there somewhere as early on, we didn't have Nebo on Auto logging ...but I am not motivated enough to scour through those early logs looking for a little discrepancy..

The locks don't account for all of those step/flight locks- where one lock was 2, 3, or even 6 consecutive lock chambers. I am not going to go back and count all of those. No matter how you look at it, it's a few locks....😬😜

Lock stats:

• Tallest- first lock on the Tenn Tom at 84 feet

• Shortest- Last lock on the St Lawrence at 1 foot

• Smallest- Cape Coral- no idea on size. Small. It was also our very first lock- seemed such a big deal at the time. 😂

• Largest- Mississippi River 1200 feet long

Total days by segment and total:

1. Blue: East Coast - 38 days. Travel days 27

2. Red: Vermont- 5 days. Travel Days 4

3. Yellow: Ca take 1. 37 days Travel Days 26

4. Purple: Ca take 2. 41 days Travel Days 25

5. Brown: Lake M. 21 days. Travel Days 10

6. Green: Home St. 55 days. Travel Days 27

Total: 197 days 119 Travel Days

Total Marinas:

Blue: East Coast 25

Red: NY-Vermont 3

Yellow: Ca take 1 11

Purple: Ca take 2 10

Brown: Lake M 10

Green: Home Stretch. 22

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Total 83

Total Anchors and Walls:

1. Blue: East Coast 2

2. Red: NY-Vermont 1

3. Yellow: Ca take 1. 15

4. Purple: Ca take 2. 12

5. Brown: Lake M 0

6. Green:Home St 2 plus 2 tugs

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Total                 34

If anyone is paying close attention, the count is off by 2 compared to travel days and that is returning to our home marina's...

• We don't have a lot of stats on fuel, but our most expensive fuel fill was at Chateau Montebello during Ca take 1 at 9.00 per gallon and our cheapest fuel fill after our departure from Rouses point in NY ( VT) -which came in at 3.19 - was 3.69 per gallon on the Tennessee River.

• Overall, MaD averaged 5 gallons an hour in fuel burn and our total hours running her was about 650 hours.

• Our biggest mileage day was traveling the Gulf at 175.8 miles and our shortest mileage travel day was in SC at 2 miles where we changed marinas...

• Our longest actual travel day was on the illinois- going through those three locks that had been down. We left at 5:30 am and arrived at 6:30 Pm.

• Our shortest was the 2 mile journey in SC

That's what we have for stats.

I do have one last post: This is as much for me because I want to complete the log of this trip now that we are finished with the loop.

I didn't log it before because if we never completed the journey, I didn't want my blog to end with Canada take 1. What a trip it was. After writing all of this, maybe the rivers were easier..😂😜. But Canada made all the difference— Maybe. Maybe we were just stubborn.😬

If you decide to read this post, it is a post about perseverance, defeat, acceptance and a great ending. It is also our last post….. As it is long, I have added break places. This being a good place for break 1._____________

Here we go. What happened in 2022?!...

The Yellow and black is all Canada Take 1

We were supposed to complete the loop in 2022- that was the plan anyways. Mike and Will spent all summer working on MaD trying to get her ready. As the months clicked by, my stress level climbed. If you remember way back- I didn't want to do Lake Michigan in October and we were doing the Rideau Canal in addition to what I logged for Canada take 2.

We finally set out on August 19th for our big journey... Day 1 on the Chambly Canal, we propped her.

Now that we have done the canal again, it was probably our error. It is the very first channel marker on the canal where red is left and it is in the middle of the canal so you think you want to go around on the left.... Only that leads you to some pretty big rocks!

Most people know I am not creative, but this is my creation. Most people paint a popsicle stick green and red and flip it over to the side you want your markers on.

I didn’t have paint and the captain is just a tad color blind- so I gave him color and shape … It did the trick. 😂. Yes, he had charts- but they aren't always accurate and when you are doing all of this back and forth between red left and red right, sometimes an old fashioned visual does the trick. And no, he didn’t have it on Ca take 1.

We limped along the Chambly and made it to Sorel where they were going to fix the prop. Bosevort marine was great- but there were no pet friendly hotels in all of Sorel so we had to stay on the boat.

They had a holding dock on the river and said we could just go back in the water and stay there. Perfect.

There is no water or power, but all good. It was pretty and close to town for sightseeing.

Except I decided to wash clothes. Our washing machine only works on express cycle 9. Any other cycle drains the water tank. I had just talked to the repair company and he noted that yes express cycle(s) would work with our issue. So, I decided to try express cycle 4. Where I proceeded to drain our entire water tank. Whoops.....😳😖

Mike had to bike to get 5 gallon jugs of water and bring them back, walking down the long dock and fill the boat. Needless to say, he wasn't to happy with me. 😣

What great practice for the Rivers though this year. 🤣

After 3 days, the prop was done and we needed to haul the boat to put the prop back on. Only we had only one prop and the Richelieu has a very strong current... The mechanic put huge stress on our thrusters getting MaD on the trailer that brings the boats up to the shop.

Pictures:

• 1. Looking down on Lake Chambly

• 2. On the trailer

• 3. Looking at the tractor pulling us

• 4. Our dock for a few days

• 5. Certainly looks innocent enough……

We got the prop on and off we went to Montreal. We had 2 lovely days in Montreal, and then needed to lock through to continue on our journey.

We were waiting at the dock for the lock to open and when they called us, our tender had gotten stuck on a cleat on the dock. The cleats were square and somehow the tender found it. UGHHH. The lock won't wait either. And we are on a schedule. We ended out cutting the tender to free it to make the lock.-- There goes any opportunity for anchoring until this is fixed.😣

Ironically this year, we met another boat who had the exact same thing happen to him... I guess that is some condolence in the whole thing.

Looking a little deflated…. 😬

From there we continued up the Ottawa river. It was beautiful. We stayed one night at Chateau Montebello which is the largest log cabin in the world . It was also our most expensive fuel of the entire trip... Gotta pay for that beauty and charm. Things did seem to be turning around though.... Little did we know.....

Pictures :

1 and 2 Guillotine lock on the Ottawa

Chateau Montebello

Ottawa River had some Vermont similarities

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Next, we started up the Rideau Canal. It' s a lovely Canal. It starts in Ottawa and then runs through marshy farmland and eventually turns into beautiful forests and lakes.

It is much like the Trent Severn in that it is ran by the park system, there are 45 locks and plenty of free wall space. This is where we first learned of the park and the walls and just how much fun they were.

But, on the Rideau, we lost our stern thruster. They were already a little tired and that haulout on the Richelieu did them in.

Mike ordered a new thruster motor and lined up work to be done in Belleville Ontario for the thruster and then tender repairs in Georgian Bay and we kept moving on. 😋👍

Mike also spent the very big bucks. 💰 and ordered the stern thrusters to be overnighted to Canada. It was Labor Day so we knew there would be issues. And then no one thought about customs......😮

• 1. Looking down on another boat going through the flight locks into Ottawa

• 2 and 3 -Ottawa

• 4. Still smiling

• 5 and 6. The Rideau

• 7. Dogs sniffing things out

• 8. Starting a fire on one of the walls

• 9. Le Boat is a rental company. You can rent some pretty nice boats. And if you look, they are also pretty fendered up. When those bow thrusters are activated, it sounds like an airplane engine going off…

• 10. Kebabs on the grill

• 11. Campfire with a couple that we met along the way

The Rideau ends in Kingston and as we were leaving the canal heading to Kingston, a boat came at us fast and ran us out of the channel, stirring up a bunch of stuff and clogging our intake manifolds. One more thing for Belleville to look at.

We made our way to Kingston, where instead of staying at Confederation Basin, we stayed at some old marina that had extreme hazards coming out of their docks. 👺

The wind was howling and it was tough docking for sure. As we pulled into the dock, the force of the wind and god knows what else, popped the fender away from the dock and we gauged the fiberglass...

Upon further inspection, all boats that lived there, had huge tires tied to the docks for fenders-- with good reason-

We arrived in Belleville, which is at the base of the Trent Severn and had MaD pulled again, where they cleaned out all the junk and prepared to replace the stern thrusters.

Due to customs and holidays, it was more like a 5 day delivery window….so much for paying the big bucks. 🤑 In the meantime, they sprung the cord winder that Mike and Will had installed and needed to fix that.

During our wait, they had trailers (airstream knockoffs) you could rent that were right on the water so we did. It had to be the worst bed ever. I made Mike go and buy the only memory foam in town and it wasn't cheap. 🫤Yes, I am a bed snob in the biggest way!

After two days we moved to a hotel and rented a car. We drove to Kingston which was such a fun city. We saw the memorial for Gord Downie (Tragically Hip front man) and just really enjoyed the city.

We then found Prince Edward county that had wineries all over it and enjoyed a great day of wine tasting. 🍷🥂

Pictures are of Kingston. Looks like I avoided pictures of the dreaded marina and their set up…

Pictures:

• 1 and 2 wine tasting and music

• 3. How could we not go to Sugarbush vineyards..

• 4. The trailer

• 5. The dreaded bed

• 6. It did have a nice gas firepit

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At the end of the weekend , we walked into the marina where they asked us if we had heard the news. Lock 36, the Kirkfield lock had catastrophically broken. Thankfully there was a touring ship in it when it happened as the captain was experienced and was able to deal with water pouring into his boat I am not sure how the tourists felt about it though.

I Can’t imagine being a tourist , high in the air on a tour boat and all of a sudden, water is coming into the boat…had to be a little scary 🙀

What were we going to do now? I briefly talked to someone who was trucking boats around the lock. Ours was a tad big but he thought he could do it, in the end, he decided not to and just as well.

I am quite certain MaD would have fallen off the darn thing given the way things were going. 😁

It was cecision time. We could cross Lake Ontario and take the Welland canal to Lake Erie and race around the Great Lakes. As it was already so late in the season, time was getting away from us.

We really didn't want to do the Welland Canal. It's a shipping canal and locking through is painful and long. We would have had to hire a 3rd person for crew. (mandatory) Plus, we would miss the Trent, Georgian Bay and the North Channel...

We are goal oriented people, but the loop is more than just running around the country to say you did it. At least for us.. as we had to remind ourselves.🧐

None the less, we were feeling totally defeated. And then our home marina called and asked if we were coming home. News had spread about the lock closure. Gaines is right on the Canadian border and has many Canadians there so no surprise. 🇨🇦

That settled it, they had winter storage for us and we decided we were going home.🏡

We decided to do the triangle loop which takes you across Lake Ontario, down the Oswego, up the Erie and back up the Hudson to Lake Champlain. We would at least get something out of all this...🫠⛴️

And then, everything changed. We didn't have one more issue and we had a wonderful journey home. ❤️

We stopped in Phoenix on the Oswego where the whole community participated in their lock / free wall and the boating community. Kids came down and worked for tips. They had a clubhouse for the kids and gave us a picture of that years crew. It was so very cool to see this community embrace youth and nurture it. 🩷

We spent a few days in Little Falls where we hiked and saw hieroglyphs, listened to great music and had great beer. 🍺🚴‍♀️☘️🎹

We enjoyed foliage as the leaves were turning in places. My personal favorite time of year.

And yes, we made it home sweet home safe and sound. 😀

Pictures:

All pictures are along the Erie Canal

• 1 Check out the sign. It was at a marina that knew how to have fun.

• 2 and 3 hiking

• 4-6 Little falls and the hieroglyphics were in the rocks.

• 7. waterfall along the way

• 8. Looking at something

• 9. *actually Phoenix on the Oswego- The town that nurtures their kids and embraces tourism and the river life. “ The Bridge House Brats”

We weren't supposed to do the loop that year. That much I know. I mean, when every step of the way, something is wrong, the universe is trying to tell you something and boy she was downright yelling at us before she took drastic and final measures to stop us from going. 👀😈 Sometimes, you just have to listen!💫🌠🌅

Oh and that tender, it took a whole month to fix, lots of dry time in between steps, so ya, we weren't getting it fixed on that journey for sure.

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On a final note, We have been asked three questions a lot.

1. Would we do it again?

Answer: NO, What a wonderful adventure filled with challenges, adventure, fun and new found friends. But there is just too much else to do in this world.

We will do parts of Canada again though. Probably by renting a boat. Maybe some with a northern boat where VT is home base.

2. What was our favorite part?

Answer: While there were so many cool places. Albermarle Sound, the Chesapeake, Lake Michigan, even Kentucky Lake on those darn Rivers.

Our favorite part was Canada. 🇨🇦❤️ You could actually say, the Hudson, down Lake Champlain, all of Canada down to Mackinac was a super great part. There is however, a biased there with Lake Champlain...

Canada was amazing. All of it. You had both Canal systems, then you had Killarney and Georgian Bay, the North Channel. (Those are probably the top favorites) Even Baie fin and the Death Eaters! are in that list. maybe... 🦗

But It is all just gorgeous. Mackinac is in Michigan, but I loved it as much as Canada. I Don't think the captain would completely agree on that one...He did like it though.

And then, the people in Canada are amazing and friendly- but we already knew we would get that in Canada.🩷

Our favorite part is what we would have given up if we hadn't finally listened to the universe and had kept going in 2022.

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3. What is next?

Answer: in Vermont, we will buy a smaller boat and continue to do some boating on a smaller scale.

We might go down the St Lawrence to Quebec City, or up the St Lawrence and see the American side of the thousand islands.

And yes, rent a boat to go see GB and the North Channel again. Maybe dip the bow in Lake Superior.

Perhaps we will do the Western Erie and dip a bow in Lake Erie and then we could say we were in all 5 Great Lakes.

Things like that. 1-2 week trips.

In Florida- The Bahamas definitely comes to mind. The Captain is still seeking warm weather. What a winter it's been here with no complaints on my end. But a little sun would be nice.

A return to the keys, Dry Tortuga's and finally doing the Big Bend that we missed when we crossed the gulf are all things we want to do. Again, most trips a few weeks at a time...

Which leads me to——near the end of our loop, a friend called and told Mike he was selling his Beneteau Swift Trawler 50 and that if we wanted it, he wanted us to have it.

We have a long history with wanting this boat (with some trepidation, like it can't go to VT without major work to bring the height down). Regardless of trepidation, it just never came to fruition anyways. And now, it seemed, maybe it was time to make the leap.

MaD is such a great boat and served us well. But, she is too big to be our northern boat and the 50 will serve Florida boating very well.

Our maiden voyage on her was in fact, to Useppa, where I sat at a very nice dinette table and pulled all those numbers together.

Plus, the dogs also approve.

Chilling on “ New Boat”

She does need some work, so Monday, she will go in the shop and get all spruced up and then our winter boating season will begin in Mid February.

There you have it, MaD's adventures have come to an end. But I am sure she will treat her new owner just as well as she treated us...It will be bitter sweet when she is sold, but for a new chapter to open, one must end.

This blog has also come to an end for Mad Cruzin... Who knows maybe "New Boat" will have adventures of her own to write about!

Again, we so appreciate all of you for following us through this journey and wish you a wonderful 2024.

Captain Mike and Des Ollie and Gizmo🐾