AnsleyS
Senior Member
I am planning a trip by boat to continue to explore the Erie Canal. The trip will start in Maine in early June and will be about two thousand miles at about 6 knots or 7 MPH which is a fine speed for a jogger. The pace will be leisurely with a daily run time of about six hours and an estimate of the trip travel time to be fifty days. Side trips will be possible along the way including the Mystic Seaport, and Lakes Seneca and Cayuga. The route will be flexible along a predetermined path. We will start in Rockland, Maine and go down the New England coast to Long Island sound, thru the East River and around the tip of Manhattan. From there we will go up the Hudson past Albany to Waterford where we start the Erie Canal. We will continue west on the canal thru Oneida Lake and then turn south towards the Cayuga and Seneca Canal and the western part of the Erie Canal. We will continue along the historic canal “all the way to Buffalo”. Then, rather than turning around and retracing our steps we will enter Canada and go through the Welland Canal into Lake Ontario and traveling east until we get to the Oswego River. We re-enter the Erie Canal and retrace our route back to Waterford and Albany. From there we will head back to Maine down the Hudson, around New York and up New England. This whole route includes seventy-nine locks and about three hundred hours under way. I would like to finish this trip by the end of August or the first part of September which is about 90 days from the first of June.
Fifty, approximately 6 hour days underway will complete the trip but with weather delays, site seeing and side trips I expect that the whole summer season will be involved. Cruising five out of seven days will complete the trip with an additional 20 days as extras for unforeseen circumstances.
The trip is planned with our time underway, on each day that we travel, of about six hours which gives us a range of about forty miles a day. The plan calls for being underway about three quarters of the days aboard. This down time can be used for exploring local areas, frequenting cultural attractions and bars or comradery with the other boat crews nearby. We have two kayaks, two bikes and a super dinghy aboard.
The total distance is 1878.5 NM and it can be completed in 48 days at an average daily run of 39.14 NM @ 6.0 NM/h.
The daily runs were based on the 40 mile run but were adjusted to account for decent anchorages and marinas. The times under way may change depending on a number of factors and will be fluid while underway.
Please say hello if you see Jubilee go by. We are always on channel 16 and enjoy talking to other boaters along the way. We will have five different crews during this trip. The Admiral will be aboard on the Erie Canal section with another couple and other various friends and relatives for the other legs. Jubilee is a Kadey Krogen 42 (#41) from 1983 and still has her original Ford Lehman 120 HP engine.
