Seasonal Engine Hours
 

Ready to go to Dave's within the next two weeks.
Abysmal 15 hours.

I probably got in 40, but also many more spent in the sandbar, anchored or just floating with no run hours.

Marina: “Nobody here uses their boat more than you.”


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Worst season in the past 10 years ................ we normally average (and I do log it in every year) 70- 80 hours per season.

This year an abysmal 32hrs !!

With half of June and almost all of July a washout, we only got on the boat a dozen times all season. Though we used the ski(s) a decent amount, it still wasn't anywhere near a normal summer.

Sad face.

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My lake hours were down as were my ocean hours.

But this doesn't tell the whole story.

Last year I motored all over the NH seacoast seeking fish.

This year I drifted a lot and asked them to come to me.

They did not but I burned less gas.

The lake hours were down due to weather and grandbabies.

As we Sox fans say... "There's always next year!"

Lake Hours
 

66 hours here and counting! The boat usually in shortly after ice-out. Normally out of the water in late Nov. early Dec.

Restomod the '88 454 at 1282 hrs last winter. A long time for a motor. More modern cam and tighter tolerances. New gaskets. Now using synthetic oil. Use to burn a few quarts of oil a season. This season oil level drop slightly!
Modern cam sacrifice HP for more torque and supposedly better gas mileage. Same WOT and top speed but a much better response in the low and mid-range. Gas mileage is about the same as in previous years.

Almost 60 hours - a bit down from last season. Very few days when we went out on the boat for fun - this is almost exclusively back and forth to the mainland.

We did just over 100 hours on our main boat, but none on Winni. We did a 17 day MA cruise to Provincetown, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Cuttyhunk, Onset, Hull, and Salem; and a 7 day ME (mostly) cruise to Bath, Boothbay, Saco and Rockport, MA; plus multiple overnight cruises and day cruises from our home port in Hampton NH. Probably put 20 hours on the dinghy. Was a great season.

Bad weather
 

Bad weather is the culprit this year. Less than 50 hours between two boats-mostly taxi to/from.
If fuel prices continue to skyrocket, it will be interesting to see if 2022 is a replay of 2010 when a lot of boats did not get launched.

One thing I noticed when gas prices were really high (that cracked me up) was a huge percentage of boaters traveling at just below planing speed, in planing-hull boats. I suspect they did so because they thought they were saving fuel.

What is this fine vessel that took you far and wide?

It's our 1992 Tollycraft 44 CPMY. She's a 53' LOA, 14' 8" wide, "cream-puff" that we found in Michigan on Lake Erie after searching for a few months. She is powered by twin CAT 3208TA engines and cruises at 8.5 knots (super efficient), or 20ish knots (when we want to make time and can live with 1ish MPG). We live aboard her at Hampton River Marina from early May to late October. She is not fancy, but she is very solidly-built, very seaworthy, and very well-equipped with rugged and simple systems designed for the long haul. Tollycraft made great live-abaord boats, IMO. We carry a 10'6" aluminum and Hypalon RIB tender with a 15HP outboard, on davits, that we use to explore once anchored or moored.

Our previous boat was a 25' cuddy cabin that we towed to Winnipesaukee constantly, and all over the northeast from Chesapeake Bay to Ontario, to Penobscot Bay for extensive cruising. In 2018, during our last "big" cruise (a 17 day, 450 mile, loop cruise in Ontario, Quebec, and NY) on the 25 footer, my wife and I realized that we wanted to get rid of our house and live on a boat.

We bought the Tollycraft in late 2018, started the transition to live aboard full-time in 2019, and sold our house in 2020. The original plan was to cruise between Canada and the Caribbean, following the 70 to 80 degree weather year-round while working from the boat. However, a medical issue of a beloved family member changed those plans and we are kinda "stuck" in New England for the time being. It's a wonderful place to be "stuck".

Living on a boat here during Winter is certainly possible, but it would be awful, so we adjusted to our new fate and bought a modern, 1 bedroom condo at Hampton Beach for the cold months. It's only 1500 feet from the boat, so we can easily spend time maintaining and upgrading the boat all Winter.

We have zero sentimentality about the condo (it came fully furnished and equipped) and eagerly rent it to quiet and mellow, short-term tenants on Airbnb and VRBO while we are living on the boat. Our strict rental rules only attract people that want peace and quiet. We have had such a great experience renting our condo that we are currently looking for another beach condo to invest in.

It's WONDERFUL not having a family-size house and yard to maintain. I do miss having my woodworking shop and my metal working/mechanical repair shop/garage, but I have friends with similar interests that have said shops, and I'm easily making do by using their shops on occasion. The best part of not having these shops is that no one asks me to fix or make anything anymore, I can do stuff just for myself now.

Our boat and some of our marina neighbor's boats are ridiculously equipped with tools and we help each other with repairs and maintenance all the time. I suspect the camaraderie is similar to Winnipesaukee island living. I have learned SO much about "bigger" boat systems by living aboard and working with other live-aboard folks. I feel like the experiences will make me quite self-sufficient when we eventually start cruising full time.

If you have ever considered doing anything like this, I'd be happy to discuss how to do it. We love Winnipesaukee, but man, there are so many other awesome places you can cruise, nearby. The New England coast is one of the world's top 10 cruising areas. I wish the planned 26 mile canal/waterway from Alton Bay to the Cocheco River in Dover had been built so we could enjoy both the coast and the big lake without leaving our boat.

Wow!

That sounds like a good time!

Wave if you see me launch at the boat ramp.

My Edgewater 170cc is all white.

You can easily pick me out because I'm the one returning to port with no fish... :D

Season engine hours
 

Well, Dave R, you have just made several thousand Forum members insanely jealous with your extremely interesting post. Congratulations and good luck to you!

Please feel free to stop by for a visit in your boat, next season. The people in our marina are super friendly and helpful and visitors are welcomed with open arms.

Cruisers are a close-knit society. Always ready to help each other. I've met many of them during my travels in Mexico.

I mostly sail in the ocean and motor on The Lake. The West Coast is boring compared to East Coast cruising...More little nooks and crannies.

William F. Buckley had a 71' ketch. He once commented sailing in the west was going around in circles between Hawaii, Seattle and San Diego...Boring!

Dave R, are you guys considering doing the Great Loop? I've read many of the blogs about it and dream of doing it one day.

A few things on the bucket list I'd love to do with the family -

A month long cross country road trip and the great loop!

Florida Intercoastal
 

Back in the 2000's, I rented cruisers out of West Palm Beach and travel down the intercoastal to Key West. It was like I went to heaven! The camaraderie among boaters was fantastic! Would love to do it again but cruiser rentals have gone to the stratosphere!

I don't usually keep track of hours, but this thread made me wonder. I dropped the C-Dory into the lake in the middle of July ,2020 with 345 hours on the meter. I checked it this morning and I'm at 557.

Steve, that gives you an idea how many trips in & out you have done!!

Welcome
 

Dinooo1, Welcome to the Forum. My experience has also been that, whenever you get a new boat, the hours are heavier in the first season. Steve, of course, has as longer season than most of us.

I'm sure the hours would have been the same in the old boat! :-)

Absolutely will be doing a great loop. Interestingly our boat has already done a great loop with a side trip to the Bahamas in 2006. The second owners put 7000 miles on her in 7 months on that trip. We are the fourth owners, but the third owners were in their 80s, could not handle the boat, and only had her for 2 years and put just 6 hours on her.

We found the name and address of the second owners on some paper work when we bought the boat, took a chance and mailed them a letter, and they were eager to talk to us about the boat and our plans. We still stay in contact often. They had to sell her due to health issues and were extremely disappointed that the third owners did not cruise her. They were thrilled when they learned of our plans.

Back to the great loop: We have already done some of the best northeast parts of it, in a mix of our current boat and our last boat. We have cruised the entire navigable part of the Hudson River, the entire Champlain Canal, all of Lake Champlain (it's an easy drive to the fantastic, 4 lane, free launch ramp, with acres of free parking, in Colchester VT.), the St Lawrence River from Montreal to Lake Ontario (including 1000 Islands which should be on every boaters bucket list), Ottawa River From Ottawa to Montreal, the entire Rideau waterway (anther bucket list trip), including a side trip on the Tay Canal, Lake Erie, the entire Erie Canal, the northern half of Chesapeake Bay, and the Potomac River all the way to Georgetown.

I strongly urge anyone that has a trailerable boat to try the Champlain Canal. It's free and really fun to go through all the locks over it's 65 mile length. The towns along it allow free overnight docking, often with showers and bathrooms, and if you don't have a boat you can sleep on, there are hotel or camping options. You can start in multiple places as there are many boat ramps along the canal, if you don't want to do the entire length. You can also complete the canal, one way, in a day, if you start early and don't stop along the way, but that would be a tragedy. It's a nice taste of what great loop cruising is like and it's really close to home. Locks are a breeze and rarely have more than one boat in them. Obviously, Lake Champlain and the Hudson River at the ends of the canal offer all kinds of cool boating too, so you can easily extend the trip north or south. Going around Manhattan by boat is pretty cool, we've done it twice now...

We have inspired a few couples in our marina to try the live aboard life, and them and other couples to try cruising more than they ever did before. We have led a few group cruises and they are a blast. We are planning to lead a big group cruise to P-Town, CuttyHunk, Battleship Cove, Newport, Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Boston Harbor next Summer. Should be a fantastic trip. We have everyone convinced to anchor or moor as much as possible, which saves a fortune (up to $450 a night per boat for a transient slip in many places) and leads to much more interesting sights. We love marina life, but when we leave the marina, we don't want to go to another marina, we want to see whales, dolphins, sharks, ospreys, secluded beach "shenanigans", forts, light houses, etc. Anchoring and having a dinghy allows for that.

Steve’s season is still going!


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Check back in at the end of next month![emoji6]

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Just completed my fuel tax refund form, and I only used 187 gallons this summer, as compared to 360+ in the last few years.

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This picture from August 21st in Winter Harbor sums up the Boating season. 55 hours this year compared to 108 in 2020