Summer cruise summary statistics

As always I kept detailed statistics that captured the various runtime aspects of our cruise and are as follows:

• Launched 6/14 hauled out 8/11
• We were on the boat 58 nights with 32 in a marina and 26 at anchor
• Total miles traveled was 845.80 nautical miles (973.33 SM) with an average of 14.58 NM/day
• Our average speed was 7.44 nautical miles per hour
• Total time underway was 119.69 hours
• Total fuel consumed was 397 gallons and averaged $4.52 per gallon (lowest $3.95 highest $5.11)
• Our average mileage was 2.13 NM/gallon
• We ran the generator for 52.6 hours averaging 2.02 hours per anchorage (don't need to run it at the dock)

I hope you found these informative and we will see you next year.

There is always one each summer - Meet the motor vessel WTF

Each year we meet some interesting people and see some unique boats that are partaking the the Great Loop experience. The Great Loop is a cruise route that lets you circumnavigate the eastern US via the Great Lakes, Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland, Ten-Tom (KY, TN, AL) river systems, the Gulf of Mexico, the west and east coast Intracoastal Waterway, Hudson River, Erie Canal, and finally back in the Great Lakes.

This year we saw a unique participant and don't know exactly what kind of boat this was but it's definitely a "one design". The bow design was really unique and rumor has it that it was a ferro-cement hull (aka concrete). In addition, it had started in Florida. Enjoy the pictures.

The cruise is over and we are actually glad





After a fabulous summer on the northern waters of the Great Lakes we are back at our new home base in Drummond Island, Michigan. As you may remember we elected to store our boat in the North Channel for the next few years to avoid making the long haul up and down Lake Michigan which we had done for the past four years. This was done primarily to save on expenses and wear and tear but more than anything to avoid the consistently problematic trip back down the Lake Michigan in August where windy conditions are almost always the rule. To validate that we are currently sitting at the dock in Drummond with 20-30 knot winds stirring up everything and would have kept us in a marina somewhere.

In any case our last week after leaving Little Current was very nice with six peaceful nights at anchor and only one night in a marina. If you look at the attached map you can follow the route we took. We resolved the water leak problem mentioned earlier but it will have to wait until next year to be fixed as a new part is needed. We once again hooked up with the cottagers in Hotham Harbor we met a month before and had nice but familiar anchorages after that. Based on the forecasted weather we decided to come back to Drummond a day early and are glad we did (see above). At out last anchorage we saw the Mergansers (ducks) that we had seen a month earlier and they were quite a bit larger and just about ready to fly. We also ran into a Loon pair that posed for some quick pictures. No fish (keepers) were caught but a lot of fishing took place.

All in all it was a great summer and we only have to wait 10 months to do it again. Haul out happened on 8/11 and we left the island on Friday. On our way back we have stops planned in Ohio, Washington DC, and Atlanta before getting home on 8/25.

The last week of cruising begins

After three days in Little Current we are ready to keep moving westward. We left the dock at 11AM and headed over to Croker Island in the Benjamins for three days of anchoring but had to divert to Gore Bay a day early on Thursday when we discovered that we had a leak in our freshwater system and were nearly running on empty. Our boat holds 130 gallons so a lot of water went somewhere in a hurry. We will do some systems testing while we are at a dock and see if we can pinpoint the issue. An update will follow.