The Blog That Never Was 7-13-10

In 2005, we bought our Looper boat, Baby Grand, in the Chesapeake and took her 1,500 miles to Lake Superior in 23 days using only a hand-held GPS and paper charts. For the past 2 days, we have been traveling to the Trent-Severn Canal and using the same charts with our old penciled course lines visible. We return here with more knowledge and technology, and if we were really nostalgic, we could have done a one day 110 mile slog at 8mph like we did in 2005 from Oswego to Trenton.

You won’t see any blog entries from that trip. We only had time to send cryptic emails to family and friends periodically to let them know that we were ok. What a trip it was…much harder than the rest of the Great Loop… fraught with challenges and excitement….

We picked up a bad load of diesel in Rosedale on the Trent-Severn Canal, our engine started shutting down in Lake Huron and we had to change fuel filters every day often in 2-3 foot seas. We weren’t sure if the engine would totally shut down so always looked for a place to do an emergency anchorage hopefully not on rocks. Our toilet broke back on the Hudson River but we were able to do a unique porta potty set-up. Our autopilot broke probably protesting the grueling 12 hour days.

Our steering mechanism hub between the flybridge and cabin steering slipped so we lost the ability to turn left just before entering a narrow rocky channel followed by building gale force winds on Lake Superior. It was even scarier as I thought Bob had also fallen overboard as their was no motion from the flybridge wheel while I tried to steer below. Luckily the waves pushed us more to the left side as we entered Ontonogon, but there in the middle of the channel, was a dredge boat which we cleared by not breathing for a few minutes. We kissed the ground when we landed and stayed put for 3 days until the gale exhausted and called our employers with a very unique excuse.

They say what doesn’t kill you, makes you strong and this is true in our case. We couldn’t believe what we had been through and what we had handled together. We developed a can-do attitude and got hooked on adventure but please not so much.

Last time we did the Trent-Severn Canal of 240 miles and 44 locks in 4 days in t-storms; this time we will take 10-12 days. Life is pretty easy right now.