Traveling the Great Loop

Just a note to keep in touch and to confirm that my dedication to bringing you informative travel blogs is still my priority. When weeks pass without receiving blogs in your email, it is due to exploring new locations, and our traveling schedule.

We are currently running up the east coast of the U.S. One destination being the Erie Canal, opening mid-May. After crossing Lake Ontario, we will lock through the Trent Severn Canal to Georgian Bay, our hometown and boating playground. We will make numerous stops along the way.

Not one to send a blog without something of interest, at least that is my goal:

THE FUTURE OF NAVIGATIOIN

In their quest to save money, the U.S. Coastguard is thinking of eliminating 350 navigational aids along the New England coast, ( “the most rock-filled coast in the eastern U.S. “, according to Loose Cannon).

The Coastguard is feeling the effects of cutbacks, ( not due to DOGE), and buoy maintenance like most other commodities, has risen. For example, each channel buoy uses 4 shackles. Four years ago a shackle cost $45. Today they are $350 apiece, ( courtesy of Peter Swanson, Loose Cannon).

Today, most boaters use electronic charts and smart phone apps. The Coastguard feels that buoys and other floating channel markers, have become secondary to electronic charts.

Just as we saw navigation aids progress from paper charts to electronic charts in the 1990s, in the future, the ability to navigate may totally depend upon electronic charts. (Currently, paper charts are still available.) If that happens, boaters will need to carry backup computers and notepads. We carry both.

Electronic charts have made boating safer than in the days when only paper charts were in use. We would have been far safer when in the 70’s, we were sailing off the coast of Newfoundland approaching St Pierre Miquelon in dense fog. Arriving to the islands, we needed to find the buoy that marked the entrance to the harbour. The only way we could do that was to stop the boat, and listen for the bell buoy, a channel marker equipped with a hammer that struck the buoy during wave action, ( no wave-no gong). But there is always movement on an ocean even if it is slight, and that day the gong was sounding every 45 seconds. It was eerie sitting there in silence barley able to see the bow of our boat through the fog. To complicate matters, sound bounces off fog and it was almost impossible to determine which direction the gong-sound was coming from.

In addition to the excitement of not knowing our exact location, we were aware that the St Pierre – Miquelon ferry leaving for Fortune on the mainland, was scheduled to charge out of the very entrance we were trying to approach. And that was the second noise we heard, the nearby rumbling of ferry engines when it passed us! We never did see the ferry and I have never forgotten the sound of that marker gong or those ferry engines.

To read more from Loose Cannon click here: https://loosecannon.substack.com/