Nov 10, 2021
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We had a fun time at the Ft Lauderdale International Boat Show. There were zillions of very expensive boats, and we barely even noticed them! We spent our whole entire time inside looking at STUFF. One of our primary goals was to talk to Cross Chartering Yacht Transport Company about logistics for shipping Island Girl to the Pacific Northwest. We are already booked and have made a deposit with them for April, but the actual date could be anytime in April between the 1st and the 30th. One of my navigational planning questions was, how much lead time will we have? Since we have to get the Girl from the west side of Florida over to the east side (Ft Lauderdale) to be loaded on the ship, there are some logistics and planning to do. Our preferred route is to go through Lake Okeechobee, since it isn’t quite as sensitive to weather and wave conditions compared to crossing the Gulf waters from Ft Myers to the Keys. But one of the locks on the Okeedokee route is going to be out of service from January 1 – March 31! ☹️. So if we have to be in Ft Lauderdale by April 1, we’ll have to go around through the Florida Keys to get there. That isn’t a terrible option, but it will take longer, and IF we have to go that way, we might actually decide to take our time and enjoy our last opportunity EVER to be boating in our own boat in the Keys. So, we talked to the fella that was there, and he said that they should have an idea by February regarding the April timing. It depends on lots of things, including how many boats they have lined up to ship, and if they are loading ships in Ft Lauderdale every four, five, or six weeks. He also said that we could slide our date to March or May if we gave them plenty of notice. Hmmm. OK. This kind of flexibility is really hard on this Type-A Planner Navigator person!! 🤨 I guess I’ll plan both basic routes and then just wait.
While we were at the boat show, we also talked to transmission guys, shaft seal guys, embossed quick dry towel people, personalized glasswear peeps, all sorts of other vendors, and overall had a fun day. Mechanic Kenny suspects we may have to replace cutlass bearings, but just in case there’s other issues, he wanted to take the opportunity to talk to guys who know stuff.
OK – so now back to regularly scheduled programming. The stats for the loop. I know you’ve been anxiously awaiting for this, right? And how do I have all this data? Because I have spreadsheets, of course! My daughter teases me and said this cup reminded her of me. That’s what happens when you’re an accountant for 35 years…. spreadsheets and data are a way of surviving life! 😁
- Island Girl is a 39 foot flybridge motoryacht – 3988 Bayliner with twin diesel 5.9 – 330 BTA Cummins, built in 2000. We replaced Shirley (the starboard engine) prior to this trip. She evidently had consumed some saltwater sometime in her life before we bought her, and she was failing to perform up to Mechanic/Captain’s expectations. She did awesome this trip, and now Laverne was the ‘slacker’ in comparison.
- We purchased Island Girl in 2015, before we ever dreamed of doing the loop, and we aren’t tired of her yet. There will be many more adventures to tell you about.
- This trip we generally cruised at about 9.2 mph (1300 rpm) but we put her up on step and went 20 mph occasionally- like crossing the Gulf for 180 miles!
- We traveled a different route this year between Brewerton NY and Mackinac Island Michigan. This year we took the entire Erie Canal, southern shore of Lake Erie, and the western shore of Lake Huron to Mackinac Michigan. In 2018, we did only the eastern Erie Canal, then turned north and crossed Lake Ontario to Canada, traveled through the Trent Severn Waterway, Georgian Bay and North Channel to Mackinac Michigan.
- Total days from Home to Home: 221 = 31.5 weeks. (I’ll put our 2018 Loop in for comparison , which was 252 days = 36 weeks the first go-round.)
- Total days of actual boat travel: 116 days = 105 no-travel days (133 travel days = 119 no-travel days in 2018)
- Total hours of travel time, per Garmin: 651 hours (707 hours)
- Total boat miles traveled, per Garmin: 5696 miles (6040 first loop)
- Total number of Locks: 72 (112 the first time – there are more locks in Canada’ s Trent Severn than in the Western Erie Canal)
- Total number of times ‘docking’ in an unfamiliar place: over 200… including marinas, fuel docks, pump outs, locks
- Total number of nights at anchor or free docks or places that only charged for power: 30 (which was 14% of our total nights) (29 nights at 11.5% the first loop)
- Average price per foot for marinas, including electric and taxes: $2.03/ft (either prices have gone up, or we stayed in more expensive places compared to $1.65/ft average the first time)
- Total cost of marinas: $14,630 ($14,350 in 2018)
- Average price per gallon of diesel: $3.05 – actually less than 2018!! ($3.12/gal)
- Total gallons consumed: 2973 gal compared to 3,009
- Total diesel cost: $9,056 compared to $9,755
- Most expensive diesel: $3.79/gal in Tonawanda New York, near Buffalo (2018 was $4.37 US$ in Canada)
- Average miles per gallon: 1.95 compared to 2.01 in 2018…. Captain ran Island Girl a little bit faster on average this time.
- Average gallons per hour: 5.22 compared to 4.25. 😳
- Average miles per hour: 9.17 at 1300 rpm, compared to 8.54 general cruising speed 1250 RPM. See what 50 rpm can do to you?
- Number of oil changes en route: 2 compared to 3 last time. Our third one was after we got home this time.
- Major maintenance while on the loop: NONE!!!!! Compared to 2018 when we had 2 Cutlass bearings (including a haul out), 1 alternator, 2 turbo rebuilds ~ $5000 (These were all due to Island Girl’s age, not due to any damage)
- Number of repairs due to damage – ZERO AGAIN!! not even a prop ding!! (ZERO in 2018!!)… we consider ourselves double extra super lucky!
- Number of trips home: once to Washington for our oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation (zero in 2018, and we said we wouldn’t do that again)
- Number of times we had additional crew come visit us: NONE! WHAT?! Compared to 3 times in 2018. Although this time we met some of you blog readers, which was way very much fun and added special memories to the trip!
- Number of times we rented a car: I don’t even know…. forgot to keep track. Not many, because rental cars were VERY hard to find this year! – compared to 11 rentals last time.
- Number of Loss Time Injuries -NONE!!!! Last time I-me-Karen, had 2: A sprained ankle and twisted knee from one fall, and then a broken foot from another fall. Klutz. 🙃
We did not keep track of the cost of groceries or restaurants, because we would incur most of it at home anyway. Well, except for the amount of beer consumed at breweries was significantly more than we would do at home. 🍻. We ate out at restaurants more than we would at home because of the social aspects of being with friends, or to explore a brewery or two. 😉 But we’re going to eat anyway, so we didnt’ track it. Which reminds me. Amount of weight gained? About 10 pounds for me. 🤨. Why, oh why did I have to learn to like dark, barrel aged, zillion-calories-per-ounce, beer?!
So, that’s it! Island Girl is on the hard at Safe Cove for the winter. It was crazy difficult to find a marina slip for her, and we figured we wouldn’t be using her much this winter. Mechanic wants to do some maintenance before we ship her to Washington, so we just put her on dirt for a few months. We pulled her out of the water on November 2.
Upon initial inspection, no prop dings! We’ll still send them out to be tuned, so that we don’t have to deal with that later. Our goal is to get her all ready for the her move to Washington and living on her there for awhile before we have to do any out-of-water maintenance. Props look good, but we definitely need new cutlass bearings. The shafts are a bit clunky when you push up on them, which is not a good thing. Well, they do have about 10,000 miles on them!
Oh! The other person we talked to at the boat show was the Pettit bottom paint guy. Island Girl currently has Trinidad-Pro hard paint on her belly, which we just had applied a year ago. It was expensive and is still in really good condition. We know that it goes ‘inert’ if it is out of the water for more than about 72 hours. Uh Oh. She’s going to be out of the water here for a few months, go back in the water for a week or two to go to Ft Lauderdale, then be out of the water for another month while moseying to the West Coast. Then she’ll get plopped back into the water, and we don’t want to have to pull her out somewhere to paint her belly. So – what are our options? He told us that the primary growth repelling property of the hard paint is copper, which goes inert in the air because the copper starts to oxidize in the air. So, he suggested that we put a single coat of compatible properties ablative paint on her. Essentially, ablative type paint avoids stuff growing on the bottom by sluffing off into the water. By applying a coat of that, it will seal in the copper of the hard paint! Sweet! It will eventually sluff off over time, and we’ll still be left with our good hard paint. Who knew!? So, our immediate first project was to paint the Girl’s belly. That was an event! I did all the horizontal stuff and the waterline, while Kenny shimmied around on his back, rolling the bottom. (There’s no way this wimpy-shouldered swab could do that.) He says this is why we pay somebody else to do it – it’s hard work! Plus, there are notorious skeeters and no-see-ums at this yard, and then we got to add in FIRE ANTS! 🐜. Kenny got a few bites on is belly that may never go away. 🥺. But we got the whole bottom painted to hopefully preserve the good pain underneath. Kenny will finish painting the running gear after we get the props and shafts all done being worked on.
We have more projects and touch-up work that we want to do while she’s out of the water. We really just want to take this opportunity to get stuff done so that we can just go play once she gets to Puget Sound. Speaking of the Pacific Northwest, here’s a little map. Island Girl will be plopped in the water in Victoria British Columbia. We are HOPING we’ll get a permanent marina slip in Tacoma, which is near where both of our sons live, so that they can keep an eye on her in the winter when we aren’t around. That is about 105 miles from Victoria, and to go straight there requires crossing a big chunky yucky body of water called the Straights of Juan de Fuca. Seriously. It can be super gnarly. So we will likely go northeast and take our time wandering through the San Juan Islands (circled in green). Most of those islands are in the U.S. Fortunately, Island Girl has been in and out of Canada (Ontario) before, is registered for international travel and has her current DTOPS sticker. We don’t anticipate any issues with getting her back to the U.S. I’ll tell you more about that whole adventure when I know more!
That’s it for now, I think. 🤔. Stay tuned. You’ll never guess what else we have up our sleeves. 😃