Dear Blog Followers...

Having had a major change in our itinerary, we find ourselves at Gaines Marina in Rouses Point, NY. The Erie Canal was and continues to be closed to boat traffic because of major floods from multiple rain storms over the past 4-5 weeks. The locks flooded, the dams flooded, and the rivers flooded. The locks are s-l-o-w-l-y being repaired as are the adjacent dams. Water level control has been a huge challenge for the NY State Canal Corporation. Only a few of the locks have re-opened recently.

We decided to change our plan and have gone through the Champlain Lock system and now on the northern end of that Lake with the Canadian border in view from our marina slip. We will enter Canada tomorrow and proceed through the Chambly-Richelieu canal system to the St. Lawrence River. From there we will head west past Montreal and will head up the Ottawa River to that city.

From there we will head down the Rideau Canal to Lake Ontario near Kingston, ON and finally enter the Trent-Severn Canal. We will then proceed west to Georgian Bay in Lake Huron. That is about 400 miles from here and is where we thought we would be by now... as did most people who are doing the Great Loop.

Our Internet signal is very weak here so we hope that this message gets out. We found out today that our MiFi is inoperable in Canada so will try to utilize a different approach to communicate. But my guess is that the blog will be put on hold for now until we get back to the USA when we re-enter again in Northern Michigan in about a month or so.

We feel fortunate that we are on the move having been delayed only a short time because of the flooding. Others have been trapped in some of the locks for about a month with no where to go. We are traveling with several other boats who are like minded and want to do the same itinerary as we do. So we will "buddy" boat through this area for now.

We hope that this finds you all well and having a great summer. We are! It's just not what we expected!

We send our love to all,
Bob/Debi/Mom/Dad...