We are considering the Bayliner among 2 others for doing the loop.
No one has mentioned how they liked their boat.

Thats a shame, we really like the Quo Vadimus.

1. What did you feel are your boats attributes?
When we bought the boat we had some “Requirements” that we both had
– Galley had to have a real stove and oven
– Galley had to have a real refrigerator, not one of those dorm things
– Shower needed to be big enough for an adult to turn around in
– Heads needed to accommodate a full sized adult
– Easy on and off
– Fly-bridge and inside driving position with inside access to the fly-bridge.
– Dual engines
– Places to sleep 6
– Instrumentation (Auto-helm, Radar, GPS Chart Plotter, etc.) Of these the Auto-helm has been the most useful. The radar has only been used on the overnight crossing and thee foggy mornings that we could have not gone out in.

The 45′ Bayliner is the upper end of something that I can single hand sail.

2. What do you feel are your boat’s short comings?
– For the loop, 45′ is the upper end of easy to lock and dock. The 4588 high profile catches the wind. With doing a new dock almost every night, it can be a challenge.
– Because it’s an older boat there are some age defects, The initial purchase had us replacing things that were 20 years old. But the boat was well maintained mechanically so that really hasn’t been a problem. We have a pilot house leak I’ve been fooling with for 4 months. One of the things we bought that has paid for itself in happy times is an island bed matress with real innerspring and foam topper.
– The island bed isn’t walk around, getting into and putting clean sheets on is a challenge.

3. How do feel about the costs to operate this boat?

The overall cost has been below what I expected. I had budgeted 1 gallon of fuel for every nautical mile, I’m getting about 1.5 MPG. That and a lower cost of fuel has cut $6,000 off my fuel estimate. With a 40′ boat I would have saved almost $2,000 in dock fees, about 3% of our overall budget.

4. Knowing what you know now, would you have purchased a different boat?
If we had unlimited cash resources, maybe. But at the time (2011) this was the right boat for the right price. I really haven’t done a boat search in the last few months to see what is out there that would fill our requirements list.

Thank you for you candor.

No problem, thanks for the questions!

This is the monthly status report. We have gone 3200 miles in 7 months. We are about a 10 days behind where I wanted to be, most of it due to bad weather in the last 3 weeks. We are in Apalachicola for a week now, and looks like we will get out in a few days.

We did take advantage of the weather days to do some side trips. In the last thiry days we did a three day trip to New Orleans and another three day trip to see my son and Susan’s parents.

For the last 30 days there has been lots of Loopers. From Midway Marina to Apalachicola there was only three nights that we were not anchored / docked with another set of Loopers. So we’ve had lots of opportunities to meet other people.

Susan is making good progress on her quilt. Everything is cut out and the small puffy squares are sewn and waiting final stitching. It looks like there is a good chance it will be done for Christmas.

I’ve been busy blogging, posting on the AGLCA forums, the Bayliner forums and of course chatting with the loopers. There have not been a lot of maintenance items on the boat. The bad fuel issue seems to have been reduced, I can go about 200 gallons between filter changes. I’ll change it before the big crossing and see how it makes out with all the extra sloshing around. If it’s clear then I’ll run as far as Sanibel Island and try to use what fuel is there. Still running about 1.4 miles to the gallon and my price is $4.17 a gallon. Fuel has been much cheaper here. With the next few fill ups I’ll be under $4 per gallon.

There is one minor problem the door that leads to the fly-bridge has a small tear in the gasket and it leaks when it rains. We’ve been doing a towel there to catch the drops, but I need to put something in place for the three weeks we will be gone.

We are both looking forward to being home for the Christmas holidays, hard to think there is only 28 days to go.

Hard to think we’ve been on the water for 180 days. It seems like yesterday that we were having dinner in Delaware City. We have covered 2564 nautical miles or 2949 statute miles, so from a distance standpoint we are at the ½ way point. Unlike our poky progress through Canada we’ve made some huge jumps. In the last three weeks four days were over 50 miles long, one was 96 nautical miles (110 statute miles) So we are getting close to being back on plan. There are some long days coming up, but we are also planning a three day trip to New Orleans.

So far we’ve been in 11 states (Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi)

We took a long break in Green Turtle Bay to go back to Pennsylvania for a funeral and a few extra days to rest up. We were able to see the most amazing grand daughter in the world. She is in that pre-walk stage, I’m going to guess as I post this she is now walking / running. She is also working on saying “Capt Pop-Pop”, she should have that down by Christmas

Susan and I are both doing fine. We will both be happy to get off the river system. It’s intense driving, needing to watch every minute for trash floating in the water. Our locking skills are pretty good, but the long waits for locks still aggravate me.

We continue to meet really nice people, both on the water and off. The week of travel down the Mississippi, Ohio, and Cumberland to Green Turtle Bay showed how much fun traveling in a group could be. At the marinas we’ve met some very nice people who work there and boat there. We get quick smiles, offers for beer and a few places where there wasn’t a loaner car, local people have offered to take us places.

Quo Vadimus continues to operate well. I’ve been doing the maintenance cycles of oil changes, fuel filter changes, checking fluids, etc. The time between fuel filter changes has gone up, so it looks like I’m getting most of the sludge out of the tank. Mostly the water has been calm, it will be interesting to see if the waves in Florida stir things back up again.

Still lamenting the loss of Belle. For a few days after we would catch glimpses of her and occasionally hear her. I’ve decided that we’ll keep flying the “Cat On Board” flag until we get back home.

We have also heard from many of you either by email or your comments on the blog. It’s always nice to hear from you. We are planning to be home in December, we will work on catching up with you then. Until that happens we will continue to toast “Family, old friends and new” at Docktails.

Just a quick monthly update of where we are and how its going.

To date 2117 nautical miles (2434 statute miles), so we are about 1/3 of the way through the trip. We’ve completed month 5, so we’ve been gone almost ½ of our estimated time. We’ve traveled 81 of those days, for a total of 318 hours. So travel days are about 55% of the time, we were targeting 60% so that’s close. Our miles per travel day was predicted at 30 per day, it’s now 26 miles per travel day. It’s taken a big jump in since last month, we did long leaps around Lake Michigan and in going down the Illinois. For example we averaged 35 miles a day for the last 9 days.

We’ve burned 1,478 gallons of fuel, with an over all economy of 1.4 miles per gallon. We gotten some great mileages the last few days with a 3 knot current pushing us. The next 350 miles won’t be as good since the current on the Mississippi is less and we will be facing a current on the Ohio. Average cost for fuel is now $4.45 a gallon and has been dropping since we left Canada. We budgeted $36,000 for fuel ($6 per gallon for 6,000 miles) so we are under budget for fuel costs.

Dock cost are averaging $1.50 per foot per night. We paid $3.50 a foot (including electric and taxes) in Chicago, that’s been the highest in the last 30 days (really in the entire trip).

So much for facts and figures.

Belle is still doing OK. As an elderly cat, she has her issues, but is still hanging in there. She has kept up her routine of getting us up in the morning. Wasn’t a big deal in the Eastern Time Zones, but it’s now 5:30 AM in CST and it’s annoying. We’ll be back in EST pretty soon, so that should help. She still naps around the boat while we move, but she’s been thrown a few times by the long lock waits. She has assumed that we were done for the day and would come up. We’d then start the motors and she would climb back down and head to the V-berth.

Susan has been keeping up with the pictures and the videos pretty well. Lack of decent internet connections has made it hard to uploads. During the longer days she has been splitting the driving with me and that’s helped both of us.

She is still making great dinners. Not as often since we’ve had great places to eat in Milwaukee, Chicago, etc. But there is lots of anchorage time coming, so expect to see more posts about her great food.

Foster is still doing OK. My shoulder pain has come and gone, some due to backing down on the exertion and I got a resupply of my Chinese Herbs. There is lots of planning to do as we go down the rivers, so I’ve been more in the future than in the present moment. But my September memories of horse poop, walleye fishing, fish boils, Maker and science Fun, Sputnik and the cool Chicago buildings are very good, still super happy that I’m on the trip.

Both Susan and I are tired, the last month has been a whirlwind of places with lots of heavy duty touring and sightseeing. We have been doing so much at each place it’s been hard to keep the blog up to day. (Presently I’m 3 days behind). I’ve tried writing on the rivers, but it almost needs both of us looking for the barges, fish boats and markers.

We will be in a little calmer location in about 10 days at Green Turtle Bay in Kentucky, I’m planning a few extra days there to recharge.

The boat is doing well it gets an oil change and a transmission fluid change on Monday. I’m still working of the algae in the fuel, but changing the filter every 75 gallons seems to have that under control.

We both still miss you guys back home and are looking forward to real face time in December.