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Old 10-28-2021, 09:49 AM   #23
Dave R
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Originally Posted by Juiced06GTO View Post
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!
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...
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