Final preparations

After years of planning & prep, we're almost there! I started thinking about buying a boat & going cruising in 1998. Chris bought into the idea around 2004. We sold our express cruiser power boat in 2005 and bought the sailboat in 2007. We were almost departing in 2008 when the poop hit the fan. We finally sold the house this summer and promptly sold off just about everything. No storage unit, no house; a few boxes at the relatives is all we kept that we aren't taking with us.
This last month has been extremely hectic trying to get rid of the last of our stuff, finish boat projects and sell the cars. But the end...and the beginning...is near!!!

We were planning on cruising from the Great lakes to Buffalo & the Erie Canal to the Hudson River and down to the Atlantic. But hurricane Irene did significant damage to dams on the Erie and they have closed it for the rest of the season. It's questionable if they will even open the canal next year. So implement plan B. We'll be sailing north up Lake Huron, under the Mackinac bridge into Lake Michigan and down to Chicago. We'll harbor hop along the way as weather permits. Don't need to give Gordon Lightfoot more material.

In Chicago we pull the mast for low bridge clearance down to the Mississippi River, up the Ohio and into the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. The Ten-Tom is a series of locks, dams & canals, built in the Great Depression by the TVA. It will take us to Mobile, Ala. and the Gulf of Mexico. From there we'll sail down the west side of Florida to the Keys and hopefully make the Bahamas by January.

We hope to post regular updates here on this blog along with photos & videos. We also have a Spot Messenger tracking device that will plot our course on Google maps. All I need is to find the time to configure all this stuff!!

Hope you enjoy following our cruising adventure!