North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Flooded in Waterford

Preparing for the trip

Captain Jerry has been making the final preparations to North Star, our 32 foot Cape Island down east trawler. We are anxious to leave our landlubber lives behind and begin our long awaited journey around the Great Circle. Join us as we travel 10, 000 kilometers: through the historic Trent Severn Waterway; the pristine waters of Georgian Bay; the North Channel of lake Huron; and hop from beach to beach on lake Michigan. We will visit Chicago and begin our trek along the rivers: Illinois; upper Mississippi; Ohio; Cumberland: Tennessee; Tenn-Tom Waterway and the Black Warrior. We will have transited through 68 locks at this juncture. We have chosen the inner route from Mobile Alabama to Tarpon Springs Florida and the shorter Ocheechobee Waterway to reach the East coast of Florida. We will skip over to the Bahamas to wait out the winter before heading North on the Atlantic Inter Coastal Waterway.
The 10 years of researching and planning are finally at an end and we invite you to come along on our adventure.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Flooded in Waterford

logs coming down the river by our boat

The rain poured down all day yesterday. It finally let up for a short time in the evening. There is so much water running down the system that they had to close the Erie Canal at around 12:00. The Champlain Canal is still open so we could leave today if it was not raining. Who wants to lock through 7 locks in the rain. They are also calling for thunderstorms later today so we will stay put.
The water level was at 16 feet when we pulled in on Saturday and now it is at 20' 6'' according to the gage under the bridge. We had to walk to a walkway to get off the dock and now we simply step down to the wall from the dock. We heard logs bumping against the boat all night.

The floating dock is up to the top of the concrete wall

It is like home week here, we met up with a Canadian we ran across in Oriental North Carolina. There is a french couple in front of us who came in at high speed because the current was so strong it was pushing them on us. He cleared our boat bu a few inches and gave us a little bit of a scare. Very nice folks!
We just lay around reading and watching movies yesterday and it looks like that is what we are doing today as well.
We should be able to leave tomorrow if the current settles down.