Great Loop - How Long from NJ to Memphis

[Bighouse]

New guy. Long story short: I have a chance at a very desirable sailboat at a very low price. The boat is in New Jersey (Tom's River). I would need to move the boat from NJ to Memphis by way of Great Lakes, etc.

I have two weeks' vacation time saved up. The hull speed of the boat would be approximately eight knots. I am willing to drive very long days but I'm an inexperienced mariner and if anybody is going to run aground or hit something it will be me so maybe cruising at night is not the best possible idea.

Assuming the diesel holds out, is it possible to make that journey in two weeks' time do you think?

Thx

Ken

[Bighouse]

I spent some time with Google Maps' nifty distance calculator and traced the entire northern part of the loop, and answered my own question:

From Tom's River, NJ to Memphis by way of Great Lakes and down the Mississippi, sticking close to shore, is 2429 miles. Moving 9 mph for 14 hours/day that would be 19.2 days not counting breakdowns or bad weather etc.

Unless my math is wrong. Whenever I do math something awful usually happens. =^)

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Bighouse

...From Tom's River, NJ to Memphis by way of Great Lakes and down the Mississippi, sticking close to shore, is 2429 miles. Moving 9 mph for 14 hours/day that would be 19.2 days not counting breakdowns or bad weather etc...

I have two weeks' vacation time saved up. The hull speed of the boat would be approximately eight knots. I am willing to drive very long days but I'm an inexperienced mariner and if anybody is going to run aground or hit something it will be me...

Your arithmetic is nearly correct (19.2777 should be rounded to 19.3), but your basic assumptions are suspect.

I’d calculate an 8 knot sailbboat to AVERAGE less than 8 kts over a full day (day after day) - certainly not more than hull speed.
Since you’ll only have about 11 average daylight hours in October*, at those latitudes, I’d assume shorter travel days (than 14 hours), in unfamiliar encumbered waterways.

So:
Assuming a trip covering 2,500 miles, at 7 knots (optimistic), over 10.5 hour days, I’d expect the trip to take not less than
2500 ÷ (7 x 10.5) = 33.33 or 34 travel days

If you could do the trip in May or June, 13 - 14 hour days might be realistic; but would still require 25 - 26 travel days.

[Bighouse]

Excellent points, thank you.

I thought I might be able to bring the average up once I got into the Mississippi. I think the river at least past the Missouri flows over four knots?, so speed made good would be well faster than hull speed. But you are right, this is biting off way more than I can chew no matter how you tweak it.

[Curmudgeon]

Hire a trucker to bring your boat to Memphis and charter in the carribean for two weeks. When you consider the cost of fuel, food, etc. for the 2500 mile trip, it's probably cheaper to have it shipped.

[Martinini]

If it's a big boat it would cost at leat $5000.00 maybe more to ship. Consider a long vacation and take her down Atlantic coast and up the TenTom to TN.