A delivery

Mary and I have agreed to deliver a Grand Banks 36 from Orange Beach, AL to Michigan City, 36-miles east of Chicago on Lake Michigan.  The boat was owned by friends of ours and sold to a Canadian couple.  A couple of years back, I accompanied my friend on an inspection of the boat to Stewart, FL where it had languished at a private pier.  We found the boat to be in good shape except for the exterior wood work, which he later rejuvenated to like new condition.  He and his loyal wife labored mightily to restore the entire boat to like new condition because that's the kind of guy he is, and she the loyal partner she is. But time wore on, and the decision was eventually reach to sell the boat. 

At some point in sale process, I mentioned that I would enjoy delivering the boat to Canada I my friends or the new owner elected not to do so.

Having owned a GB with the same propulsion and generator plants plus having spent a lot of time in the particular boat helping to sort out and label the electrical and fuel systems, I feel quite confident in it to get us successfully up the 1400-mile delivery through five major river systems including a couple of hundred miles of the Mississippi from where we dump into it from the Ohio River until we get off of it above St Louis onto the Illinois River.

We originally planned to get the boat headed north in early May, but tremendous Spring storms across the mid-west flooded the river systems to near record levels making passage up them with this single engine 9-MPH boat impracticable.  Our current plan, based on lowering river levels, is to depart on 29 May 2017 with the boat from Orange Beach, AL, where it has been stored at a pier behind my brother Jim's house for a month.  I am anticipating about 28 underway days to make the trip with a total elapsed time of around six weeks to allow for weather and river condition-induced stops.

Mary and I have been all or most of the way up the first waterway we will encounter (450-mile long Tombigbee) twice, all waters after that will be new to us.