How many hours a day do you average....

psneeld said:

Oh believe me...us slow pme KNOW a lot of people crise much faster.

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And people cruise faster than us. And people faster than them. My wife has occasionally dreamed of a 60 mph Nortech. But then a 90 mph Fountain would still go flying past. Our Riva runs 42 knots, cruises at 37. For a center console that would be slow in today's world as the basic ones cruise 50-60 knots and the fast ones 70 knots.

BandB said:

And people cruise faster than us. And people faster than them. My wife has occasionally dreamed of a 60 mph Nortech. But then a 90 mph Fountain would still go flying past. Our Riva runs 42 knots, cruises at 37. For a center console that would be slow in today's world as the basic ones cruise 50-60 knots and the fast ones 70 knots.

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Not quite cruising boats though....

One real issue with speed on the loop or for snow birders is just so many places and for other boats you have to slow down.

Not enough to warrant not having the speed, but it used to drive me nuts delivering boats capable of 20 to 30 knot cruising and so much of the trip you are being hard on the engines with the ups and downs.

psneeld said:

Not quite cruising boats though....

One real issue with speed on the loop or for snow birders is just so many places and for other boats you have to slow down.

Not enough to warrant not having the speed, but it used to drive me nuts delivering boats capable of 20 to 30 knot cruising and so much of the trip you are being hard on the engines with the ups and downs.

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Yes, the canals with the 5 mph and 10 mph limits. I'm sure the moment we hit Lake Ontario we'll be ready to run at speed. The Great Lakes will be nice for speed. For the snow birders who like the ICW a lot of slowing down. We prefer running outside and speed works there.

A lot of the view of speed is where one is coming from. Sailboaters look at it entirely different than those who had fast bowriders or ski boats on lakes. We were use to cruising at 35 to 40 knots on the lake even if only had an hour's worth of distance available.

For us, the trip is the destination. Once a boating (dock bound, mostly) friend asked us where we were going on our cruise. I said "Sanford, FL" (the farthest a big boat can go on the St Johns River in Florida). She said "What are you going to do there?" I said "Turn around and come back."


The point is, we weren't cruising to Sanford, we were cruising the AICW and the St Johns River. Sanford was nice but so were the other towns and cities along the way. And the remote anchorages.


There are a few places where being able to go fast would be nice, but in general, seven knots is a good speed to enjoy the scenery and wildlife.

WesK said:

There are a few places where being able to go fast would be nice, but in general, seven knots is a good speed to enjoy the scenery and wildlife.

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We love the scenery and wildlife, but we also love the coastal towns with all their heritage and character. In my Corporate life I had many places I'd been but never seen. Fly in, work, fly out, never a day to even know the city. Boating we don't want to do that. So we love the cruising and we love the towns along the way. However, if the towns don't interest you and just the scenery and wildlife does then that's perfectly ok.

One other thing we do a lot of. When we're in an area, we get in our RIB and explore the shore and banks up close, dive into the areas one can't get a larger boat (Jet Rib) and see everything like that. I'm sure many of you who anchor do similar. Amazing how close one can get to some amazing wildlife.

how about this.... if you were cruising lets say up or down the intercoastal how many hour per day would you run ????

KEVMAR said:

how about this.... if you were cruising lets say up or down the intercoastal how many hour per day would you run ????

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What speed?

I would ask what are your cruising habits?

Town to town? Anchorage to anchorage? Daybreak to sunset? Etc..etc...

Still so many variables without the narrative of what people cruise for.....

KEVMAR said:

how about this.... if you were cruising lets say up or down the intercoastal how many hour per day would you run ????

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I would average around 4, which would probably be 8 every other day or sometimes 0 for two days followed by a 12 hour day. i do think anyway you obtain it, averaging 4 per day is a nice leisurely pace.

The ringer is...sometimes I would rather put in a couple long days to make up for being able to sit for a few. Sure it still averages out if you cruise enough...but I use the same reasoning when driving a car sometimes. If the stay doesn't outweigh the driving round trip...it better be something dang important.

Without explaining each style of cruising, even when some use them all......the what info are you really passing?

KEVMAR said:

how about this.... if you were cruising lets say up or down the intercoastal how many hour per day would you run ????

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Think a great deal of that depends on where you are. I've done as little as 30 miles (4 hours) to stop at a particular destination, and close to 100 miles (12 hours) when the flow was going my way. Ideally 40 to 75 miles (6 to 11 hours) is my preference.

Ted

If you include the delivery from Alaska last year then my average is 7.3 h/day. Not including the delivery, my daily average (including days at anchor/dock while away) is 4.7 h/day.

I think that this is an interesting measure. We all know that faster boats go further than slow boats. This statistic says what proportion of your trips are spent at the helm. It's a traveling to hanging out ratio. People for whom it's more about the destination will probably have lower numbers. Those who don't care about where they're going but enjoy the journey will likely have higher numbers.

In my case I'm berthed 2.5 hours south of anything interesting! So far I've done no day trips though - I always stay overnight somewhere.

Richard

KEVMAR said:

how about this.... if you were cruising lets say up or down the intercoastal how many hour per day would you run ????

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We usually run four to six hours per day, four days out of seven. The other three days we spend relaxing onboard and/or exploring ashore.

BandB said:

We love the scenery and wildlife, but we also love the coastal towns with all their heritage and character. ..............

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I should have mentioned the towns as well.


As for not being able to speed on the Loop, are you going for the medal or do you want to get something else out of the trip? It's not how fast you go, it's the scenery, the wildlife, and the towns and cities along the way.

WesK said:

I should have mentioned the towns as well.


As for not being able to speed on the Loop, are you going for the medal or do you want to get something else out of the trip? It's not how fast you go, it's the scenery, the wildlife, and the towns and cities along the way.

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We hope to get something else out of the trip. At 7 knots, it's pretty much hug the shore, take the shortest route. We can cross the various Lakes at speed. Lake Ontario we intend to go from Oswego to Rochester to Sodus Point to Fair Haven to Sacket's Harbor to Kingston, Ontario to Toronto to Hamilton to St. Catherine's with 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 days at each location. On Lake Erie, we intend to cruise both sides and from Buffalo to Grosse Pointe. From Lake Huron we also intend to cruise the Georgian Bay about 10 days. Most loopers don't even go to Lake Superior. We have 16 days planned there taking us all the way to Duluth, MN. We intend to cruise both sides of Lake Michigan including even areas like Green Bay.

The most common routes from NYC to Chicago cover about 1200 nm. Between NY and Chicago we will cover about 2400 nm. If you remove the Canals from that then it's about 2100 nm to 800 nm so we will cover a little more than 2.5 times the area on the Great Lakes than the shortest route and probably twice as much as most loopers. Yet, during those days we will spend a third or less as much time getting from place to place so have more time to explore all these areas we've never been to.

When one hear's about speed the assumption they make is we want to cover the loop in less time. Actually the opposite is true, we want more time to cover it and not just completing the path. Here's our Lake Ontario pattern of hours cruising per day (Now we'll spend more time on the water exploring locally in boat or RIB), hours to get from place to place. 8 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 3 0 0 3 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 11. The longest stay is 3 1/2 days in Toronto which isn't on most loop schedules. Lake Erie is 0 5 0 2 0 1 8 0 0 3 0 4 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 6 0. We want to see the most we can on each of our Loop's. We'll spend a couple of summers after exploring the inland rivers before ever heading on to the gulf.

Only place we can't speed is the first 350 miles or so.

BandB said:

We hope to get something else out of the trip. At 7 knots, it's pretty much hug the shore, take the shortest route. We can cross the various Lakes at speed. Lake Ontario we intend to go from Oswego to Rochester to Sodus Point to Fair Haven to Sacket's Harbor to Kingston, Ontario to Toronto to Hamilton to St. Catherine's with 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 days at each location.

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BandB, I am a slow guy, but I don't view you fast folks negatively at all. (except when they don't pass me fast enough to stay on a plane or don't slow way down). Your trip sounds great and the speed you have available gives you all kinds of options that I would never have at 7 knots.

BTW, my Dad grew up on Lake Ontario outside of Younstown and I still have family there. I always enjoyed visiting them and sailing out of the Youngstown Yacht Club (primarily a sailing club I think). Pretty area, protected water, and the Village of Youngstown is nice with some great local historic sites to see close by.

dhays said:

BandB, I am a slow guy, but I don't view you fast folks negatively at all. (except when they don't pass me fast enough to stay on a plane or don't slow way down). Your trip sounds great and the speed you have available gives you all kinds of options that I would never have at 7 knots.

BTW, my Dad grew up on Lake Ontario outside of Younstown and I still have family there. I always enjoyed visiting them and sailing out of the Youngstown Yacht Club (primarily a sailing club I think). Pretty area, protected water, and the Village of Youngstown is nice with some great local historic sites to see close by.

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There are so many places to visit on the Great Lakes. One could loop 10 times and still barely touch the surface. It was hard for us to say no to taking the St. Lawrence to Montreal this time but you have to choose. We'd end up with 4 places in a general area on our list and then just decide, which one for now. It's like the Eastern stretch of Lake Ontario, there are easily 5 or 6 nice stops and we settled for one, but we have nearly three days there and we are going to explore a lot in the RIB at least one day.

Next time we loop, our stops will be 80-90% different, just repeating a few favorites. Near Youngstown, which isn't on this trip, we'd like to see Fort George and Fort Niagara parks. We'd looked at Niagara on the Lake Sailing Club as a potential stop.