Quote:
Originally Posted by Kokoda Road
 <snip>
Question; Can I get from Florida to the great lakes by sailing. (The ICW has been calling me since I discovered it existed) Where can I get to that is west of the lakes.
One idea was to purchase the boat in Florida or down that way and then make my way home [to Australia] the long way round.
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Yes, you can, but if you stay inside (the ICW), instead of going outside (the Atlantic), you won't do much actual sailing.
If you purchase a vessel between now and about May or June, then
head north, you will have lots of company, as that's the usual state of things as people
head out of the
hurricane belt before summer, as often as not because their
insurance requires it. You will have to go outside around
New Jersey, then sail back into
New York Harbor and up the
Hudson River.
You can have your
mast stepped and enter the Erie
Canal at Albany (actually Waterford, just north of Albany), head west, and 524 miles later you'll emerge at Buffalo (actually Tonawanda, just north of Buffalo.) Or you can keep going north up through Lake Champlain, into the St. Lawrence much further east and north than Buffalo. You also have the option of taking the Oswego
Canal into
Lake Ontario.
Once you're in the Great Lakes, you can get quite far west - but if you want to get out of the northern latitudes before you get caught by cold
weather, you'll want to head south from Chicago down the river system to the Gulf. This will leave you on the "wrong" end of the
Panama Canal, however, so you'll need to go through the Ditch to take the short
route home to Aus.
There is a book written by William Least Heat-Moon called
River Horse. The author is, or was, an
English professor at The University of Missouri, and the book is about his 5000-mile journey across the US from east to west entirely by using the nation's navigable rivers. (Except that, in
parts of the West, it was necessary to portage his 22-foot
Cape Dory power vessel around various impedimenta - usually dams.) I don't think I would want to attempt a replication of his journey with an underpowered sailboat with a stepped
mast across the
cabin top from stem to stern.
Anyway, good luck with your quest.
TaoJones
Aussie Gotta get There
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