David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Location:  North Palm Beach, Florida

When we were in the Bahamas this winter, we asked one of our cruiser friends where they were headed next, to which they replied, “Our plans are etched in Jello.” Well said!

Kathryn, Ayla, and I have made our summer cruising plans, and although they’re not etched in stone, they’re probably now a little more firm than Jello. Since the best time for us to transit the Panama Canal is next winter (for a variety of reasons), we’ve decided to head north to the Great Lakes this summer, enjoying the interesting waterways along the way. Here’s our current plan:

• We will depart Palm Beach, Florida in the next week or so and make our way up the Florida coast, which we did not get to see on our way down last fall. We’ll probalby stop at Port Canaveral and St. Augustine.
• From there we’ll look for good weather opportunities to cruise offshore, making our way up to New York as directly as possible. We enjoyed much of the east coast from the Chesapeake Bay down to Florida last fall, so we would rather get up to the northern cruising grounds as quickly as possible this spring (although not before all the snow melts!).
• From New York we’ll cruise up the Hudson River, and then west on the Erie Canal. Because of our air draft (height), we will need to take the Oswego Canal to Lake Ontario instead of finishing the Erie Canal to Lake Erie.
• From Oswego on Lake Ontario, we’ll cruise west to the Welland Canal, which will take us into Lake Erie. I’m sure we’ll stop in Niagra Falls while we’re in the area, as Kathryn and Ayla have never been.
• Once in Lake Erie, we’ll head for Sandusky where Ayla is excited to visit Cedar Point (she’s a roller-coaster junkie). Then we’ll head north to Harsens Island on Lake St. Clair (where I grew up). It will be fun to come home aboard our cruising home.
• We’ll then cruise north into Lake Huron, heading for Mackinac Island. We’ve all been there before, but we would love to go there again on our boat.
• Depending on timing (we’ll see how long it take us to get this far), we may cruise over to Grand Traverse Bay in Lake Michigan, stopping at Harbour Springs along the way.
• We’ll then head east into the fabled cruising grounds of The North Channel of Georgian Bay. We’re really looking forward to cruising this area, and this the terminus of our summer plan.
• We’ll then head across Georgian Bay to the entrance of the Trent Severn Waterway. This unique canal/lock/railroad system will take us from Georgian Bay across Ontario to Lake Ontario. The Georgian Bay end of it has a railroad that takes your boat up and over a cliff to get into the waterway — it should be quite an experience!
• Once we’re back in Lake Ontario, our plans become a little more etched in Jello. We want to be back in Florida by October to get ready to cross to the Yucatan Penninsula in Mexico in November. So depending on how long it takes us to get to this point, we’ll either head back through the Erie Canal and Hudson River, or we’ll go up the St. Lawrence Seaway to Montreal and Quebec, and then go out around Nova Scotia to Maine. It’s unlikely we’ll have time for this, and we don’t want to rush through it, but hope springs eternal.
• Whether we go up and around, or down the Hudson, we’ll go visit Boston. We have family to live outside of Boston, there is a lot of American history there for Ayla to see, and we think it’s generally a wonderful city to visit.
• We’ll then head south, looking for opportunities to cruise offshore to make faster progress south. Again, we hope to be back in South Florida in October.

So that’s the summer plan. If you happen to live somewhere along our route, please be sure to visit us when we’re in your area. You can always drop us an e-mail to ask where we are, and soon there will be a live tracking feature on the home page of the web site.