INTRODUCTION

    After running the Carver 440 for 6 years, we wanted a pilothouse boat, mainly to get out of the heat on the flybridge.  I also wanted a larger boat with more range and capabilities.  Angela did not want to loose any of the good qualities of the Carver 440, which proved hard to do.  We wanted more, not less, refrigerator, closet space, cabinet space, etc.  These attributes were strong on the Carver, and many pilothouse boats had less, not more, of those characteristics.  We looked at Queenship, Symbol, Tollycraft, Navigator, Compass, Offshore, Carver, Ocean Alexander, and others in the 55 - 60-foot size range; and we finally decided on Grand Harbour.  It had the largest refrigerator of any boat we saw, and it had more closet space, too.  It had less cabinet space in the galley, and Angela had to give up the garbage disposal and full-size dishwasher we had in the Carver 440.

    The sale was closed January 16, 2003; and in March we began bringing the new boat back to Texas.  We had a 1,300-mile trip just to get back to home.  After that, we planned to go up the Mississippi River as far as we could.  As usual, I wanted to see as many of the tributary rivers as well.  On the way home in the fall, I wanted to go up and down the Arkansas River.  In that way I thought to have seen most of the navigable rivers in the eastern USA.  One notable exception was the Missouri River, and I considered that one while enroute to Minneapolis.  However, there are reportedly no buoys on the Missouri, and no locks.  There are wing dams, and they are not marked.  After hitting a wing dam on the Upper Mississippi, I was unwilling to take a chance on the Missouri.

     That cruise was very interesting in many ways.  I did not know about the high rocky bluffs on the Mississippi River in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota, or the high sand bars all the way up to St. Paul, MN.  The people were especially pleasant and friendly.  Marinas were not expensive, compared to some other places we've been; but 50-amp power was not easily found.  We ran over 4,000 miles on the cruise to MN and back, but we did not do the St. Croix or the Arkansas Rivers.  We needed to be home and ran out of time for those rivers on that trip.