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The Island Hopper Crew, Kevin, Debbie and Bryce, the Welsh Terrier flying the St Pete YC Burgee.

I want to summarize our travels this summer on Island Hopper,  a journey of 2750 miles and 95 days aboard.  I departed May 6 with my good fr…

Winter Harbor Marina

 We had a checklist of items to accomplish before leaving Island Hopper for the winter.  Routine maintenance such as oil changes for the two diesels (5 gallons of oil and two oil filters each), generator ( 1 1/2 …

 We leave Oswego for the 31 mile 8 lock day to our winter home, Brewerton, NY, a suburb of Syracuse.  We plan to be there 4 nights to prepare Island Hopper for her winter stay.  More on that tomorrow.  We turn to port out of the m…

We watched the weather forecast, Wed called for south winds 5-10 knots, seas less than 2 feet. We had an open crossing of 55 miles the entire width of Lake Ontario on the eastern end.  Our destination, Oswego, NY the mouth of the Oswego rive…

We elected to stay two nights in Kingston as there were many sights to see.  A university town, Queens University with its 20,000 students keeps the town vibrant.   About 150,000 people and at one time the capital of Can…

Our last day on the Rideau as we close in on Kingston on Lake Ontario.  Only 16 miles, a flight of 4 locks at Kingston Mills and 2 bridges that must open.  The last bridge at Kingston only opens on the hour.   We leave Lower Brewers an…

 We left the Hotel Kenney at 11:00 AM as we only had 12 miles and 3 locks to traverse.  WE took a hike around the lock grounds to work off the great meal last night.  It was cloudy in the morning but it burned off by noon.

 We h…

We left Westport after having a real breakfast of eggs, etc at a local diner, nice change from cereal.  The weather has cooled off lows in the 50’s high in the 70’s and sunny with light winds though some days the wind builds in the afternoon to …

We departed Smith Falls at 9:00 AM to make the first lockage.  We passed through 3 locks today and will pass into a large lake (Rideau Lake) rather than the “cuts” of the canal.  Westport is our destination which is 4 miles off the rout…

 We left Merrickville at 9:30 AM for our next stop, Smith Falls.  The dock there does not take reservations but I called them and they had several docks left so we locked up the final 3 locks, a total of 5 locks today and 14 miles.   W…