We have been planning to do the Down East Loop pretty much since we purchased the catamaran to bring the boat back to the Great Lakes. It was a trip we really wanted to do and frankly we were thinking this boat would be to high to get though the NY canal system. Unfortunately it seems we have just run out of time to make that trip happen this summer. So we are moving to plan b. I had forgotten that boats with 20ft of height can still travel the canal system. Unfortunately they can't do the Erie Canal but they can travel up the Hudson to Oswego, NY then out to Lake Ontario. Once on Lake Ontario we can travel west to the Welland Canal to Lake Erie then bring it rest the way around to Lake Michigan where it will be stored for the winter. This is our new plan.
The top of the mast on our catamaran is about 81ft off the water. I was guessing that our boat was about 15ft off the water which would make the mast some where around 60-65ft in length. Our original thought was to pull the mast and have it trucked to the marina we planned to store the boat at in Michigan this winter. I tried the UShip website that lets folks that do this kind of work bid on the job. I was get quotes in the range of $1500-1800 not cheap but we were thinking it would be much more convenient then having the mast on deck for the almost 2000 mile trip. I happened to find a boat shipping company and called them for a quote this is when they explained to me these guys had no idea what they were doing and I should avoid services like this at all costs. It seems anything over 50 some feet requires special permits and a specially marked car to follow it. Their quote was 15k for the job. I did some googling and realized what they were saying was correct and due to my mast length it might be best to put it on a special truck like they had to haul it vs letting it bounce around with 15ft or more hanging off the end. Needless to say I was not very excited about spending that kind of money. So it was time to consider other options.
The next option was to lay it down on the boat somehow. We have done this before with our first boat (you can scroll back and look at that trip further back in this blog) and it was quite challenging to move around the boat with the mast down to manage dock lines and fenders as we traveled through the canal system. But for 15k I figured we might be able to suck up the inconvenience :). I started measuring things on the boat. It seems our bimini is just under 15ft high, we might be able to make this work if I take down the wind generators somehow which the base sits about 6 inches higher than our canvas top. If we can get under 15ft we can travel the Erie Canal which would allow us to skip Lake Ontario.
So we decided to bring a crane in to lower our mast and transport the boat with the mast down via the canal system.
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