Life in the Fast Lane: Race Called???

Thursday morning we assessed our situation with regard to the remaining 1,119 nautical miles to Chicago. We considered the following:

• We had an expectation that the ECU Governor would be installed late Thursday afternoon (3:00 PM best case)
• We would not hit the Erie Canal's first lock until 4:00 or 5:00 PM
• The first six locks would require at least 3 hours
• The locks close at 6:00 PM
• We had 23 locks on the Erie Canal (minimum 12 hours plus 327 statute miles)
• We had 6 locks on the Oswego Canal (minimum 3 hours plus 24 statute miles)
• Risk of debris on the Erie and Oswego canals restricting our speed
• We needed to cover 122 NM from Oswego to the Welland Canal
• We needed a full day to traverse the 8 locks on Welland Canal
• After the Welland Canal, we had 722 NM on Lakes Erie, St Clair, Huron, & Michigan
• Our ability to traverse the Great Lakes is highly weather dependent 
• The owner had been away from home for 10 days

All of this translated into the following time frames assuming no weather or mechanical issues.

• 3 days on the Erie and Oswego Canals
• 1 day on the Lake Ontario and the Welland Canal
• 2 to 4 days on Lakes Erie, St Clair, Huron, & Michigan
• Total: 6 to 8 days

The 2 to 4 day calculation on Lakes Erie, St Clair, Huron, & Michigan is dependent on the number of runs per day as shown below.  Essentially, we needed to cover 362 nautical miles each day.  At 33 knots that's better than 10 hours of running plus at least an hour for a fuel stop.

Buffalo	Detroit	231
Detroit	Alpena, MI	197
Alpena, MI	Charlevoix	170
Charlevoix	Chicago	245

Weather, the wild card, could easily extend the trip's length to 10 days.  All of these factor caused my friend to throw in the towel at around 1:30 PM.  He announced that he was having a delivery captain and crew take the boat the remainder of the way.  Fine with me.

I was able to rent a car (Enterprise to the rescue) and by 2:30 PM I was on the road headed for Hingham. Traffic was easy until I got to route 128 and then it slowed to a crawl.  Still, I was able to make it home to the boat by 7:00 PM. The greetings for Diana and Kodi were memorable.  Diana and I had an excellent dinner at the Union Oyster House at Hinghan Shipyard.

Final numbers:

Date	From	To	N Miles	Cum NM	Fuel Burn	Cum Fuel
13-May	Fort Lauderdale	Fernandina	300	300	1183	1183
14-May	Fernandina	Charleston	212	512	851	2034
15-May	Charleston	Wrightsville	162	674	611	2645
16-May	Wrightsville	Norfolk	251	925	856	3501
17-May	Norfolk	Atlantic City	201	1126	750	4251
18-May	Atlantic City	Albany	215	1341	774	5025

So bottom line. I added 1,341 nautical miles (1542 SM) to my resume and while we did not set a world's record, making it from Fort Lauderdale to Albany in five days is still pretty impressive.

Total distance on the water so far this year: Over 3,300 miles  Total since starting the Great Loop in October of 2010: Over 10,000 miles.

Written by Les.