M/V ILLUSIONS
2007 CRUISE
INTRODUCTION
After running the Carver 440 for 6 years, we bought the Grand Harbour
pilothouse boat in January 2003. We left the boat in the Fort Lauderdale
area for about 2 months. During that time we upgraded the electronics,
replaced the dinghy, added lights and towel rods, adjusted the heights of
tables and TV cameras, replaced the water pump twice, added a transformer
and a new inverter, bought sheets and towels, loaded the boat with tools,
etc. that we shipped to FL from TX, provisioned the boat, etc. In March we
brought it from FL to TX, and later that summer we cruised to MN and back to
Texas.
It seems we were really de-bugging the boat for most of that first
year. We added stabilizers and replaced an air conditioner with a larger
unit. The manufacturer replaced all the caulking in the windows, as it was
defective and leaked. We agonized over the water pump, which was eventually
solved by the manufacturer in late-2004. He replaced both of the
high-priced Groco units with lower-cost pumps that worked like a charm.
We spent 2004 on the Tennessee River and really enjoyed some slower
cruising with a lot of anchoring out. I wanted to go back to Canada in
2005, so we decided to leave the boat in Iuka, MS for the winter. The
mechanics at Aqua Yacht Harbor had worked on our boats before; they were
capable and fair and very pleasant to deal with. So we parked the boat at
the end of October 2004 and retrieved it April 28, 2005.
Our 2005 plans included traveling to Canada and leaving the boat in New
York in dry storage for the winter, which would put us in position to cruise
the Canadian canals in the summer of 2006; and that's what we did. In 2005
we stopped along the way in Chicago, Mackinaw Island, Detroit, Toronto,
Kingston, Ottawa, and Montreal. After our first trip we were invited to go
on a cruise to St. Petersburg, Russia through the Baltic Sea; and we decided
to include that cruise in our plans for 2005.
In 2006 we made a round trip through the Trent Severn Waterway in
Canada. Then we did a portion of what we have heard is called the Down East
Circle Route. We cruised down the St. Lawrence Seaway to Montreal, Quebec
City, and the Saguenay River. We rounded the Gaspe Peninsula in the Gulf of
St. Lawrence and visited Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Cape
Breton Island. We stopped in three places in mainland Nova Scotia and
reentered the USA at Bar Harbor, ME. We spent two months in Portland, ME on
repairs; and then we cruised to Boston, New York City, Atlantic City, and
finally Portsmouth, VA where we stopped for the winter. We planed to cruise
the Chesapeake Bay area in 2007.
2007 began with
America's Birthday Weekend in May.
On Trip 2 we cruised to the Potomac River and Washington, DC, and then to
Cambridge, MD. We had some maintenance due there, such as cleaning the
aftercoolers on the diesels; so we left the boat in Cambridge and flew back
to Texas. During Trip 3 we drove around the Eastern Shore and got more
maintenance done. In Trip 4 we cruised up to the northern end of
Chesapeake Bay and down to Baltimore, MD and Portsmouth, VA. Trip 5
was extremely short; we had a maintenance problem that reduced our cruise to
just a few hours on the water. We did drive to the Rappahannock River
and see a few marinas there, and we visited Colonial Williamsburg, VA.
After that the boat spent the winter again at Ocean Marine in Portsmouth,
VA.
During 2008 we wanted to get the boat back to Texas,
but going south through Florida during the hot summer was not appealing so
we planned to go north through Canada again.
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