A step up from canoeing

[vagabondIII]

My girlfriend and I have just finished our 3 month canoeing trip down the Mississippi River and have just arrived in New Orleans today (December 8th). We are excited to continue travelling south via sailboat (maybe explore the Caribbean or Central America?). We've done a bit of sailing in and around Nova Scotia as well as on the Mississippi River. A friend of mine told me about this forum, and from what I've seen, it looks excellent.

Looking forward to learning and sharing on this forum.

-Tristan

[Snore]

Welcome to CF! There are quite a few former paddlers here.

What did you paddle?

FWIW there is a canoe trail/ICW that you can take all the way to Key West

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha and welcome to the forum!
Canoeing is another one of my favorite boating passtimes. The Mississippi is aother of my dreams.
kind regards,

[vagabondIII]

We were paddling a simple 17 foot Coleman plastic with an aluminium frame canoe. Snore, that route up to Key West looks interesting, but I think I'm ready to put down the paddle and hop aboard a sailboat.

John, it's an excellent trip (canoeing the Mississippi). It's really interesting from an geography/hydrology point of few, but also from an industry point of view, especially the lower portion of the river. Our canoeing blog is here if you're interested: strayers | stray: v. to deviate from the direct course, or go beyond established limits; to become lost; to ramble.

-Tristan

[SkiprJohn]

Thanks Tristan.
I'll check out that blog.
Here's my 19 footer. Brother and I on the Willamette.

[vagabondIII]

SkiprJohn,

Looks like an excellent boat. How does a 19 foot canoe control differently from the standard 16/17 foot canoe? There were 4 of us on the canoe trip, and I always dreamed we'd find a large cargo/war canoe in which we'd all fit. There were advantages of having 2 canoes, we could lash them together and make a simple catamaran and put up a sail for tailwind days.

[nautical62]

I did quite a bit of expedition canoeing prior to cruising. While the technical aspects of sailing are different, many of the principles of any expedition travel transfer well in my opinion.

When I look for crew I would take someone with expedition canoeing experience over someone with good day sailing skills any day. The technical aspects of sailing are easy to learnand teach. The awareness of surroundings and comfort with living basically not always so easy.

[SkiprJohn]

Our 19 footer would handle four people but not much additional gear. It's heavier than yours and would be a bit harder to handle by one person. You're probably better off with the two canoes. In one of the latest "Sail" magazines (August 2013) was just a snippet of an article about a couple that uses a 19 foot Grumman Cargo Canoe with a square stern for sailing and camping trips. That would handle more gear because of the additional interior space in a square stern versus canoe stern. The article is "Our Self-Rigged Sailing Canoe."

[vagabondIII]

Nautical62,

Thanks for your appreciation of expedition canoeing, I hope other skippers will have a similar mindset.

SkiprJohn,

Just read the Self-Rigged Sailing Canoe article. Wow, that definitely makes me a little jealous, especially considering many of our days on the Mississippi were really windy.