We’ve completed the Great Loop: Lovesick Lock to Penetang Ontario – July 26, 2017

Jul 24^th – It was a cold rainy day with moderate to high winds.  My brother-in-law called to tell us that my Mom passed away this morning … very sad news.  The funeral is planned for Friday thus we need to get home quickly so we can drive up north to support my dad and the rest of our family.  We left Lovesick lock this morning and travelled 60 miles through 7 locks to Bolsover lock.  We have 5 more locks to go before we get to Lake Simcoe and another 4 locks to get to Georgian Bay.  We figure that we should be at Hindson’s marina by Wed afternoon at the latest.

Jul 25^th – It was a warm sunny day with moderate winds.  We left Bolsover lock this morning and travelled 62 miles through the Trent Severn including a Lake Simcoe crossing and pulled into the blue line of the Port Severn lock.  All the lock masters worked hard to get us through the locks as quick as possible so we can get back for my Mom’s funeral.  We crossed our wake today as we entered the narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching thus we are now officially “Gold Loopers”!  It’s hard to believe that we completed the Loop … it doesn’t feel like we’ve been away for more than 1 year.  Tomorrow will be our last leg from the Port Severn lock to Hindson’s marina in Penetang.  

Jul 26^th – It was a warm cloudy day with some scattered showers and moderate winds.  We left the Port Severn lock this morning and travelled 15 miles to Hindson Marina and pulled into our new slip marking the close of our Great Loop voyage.  Neither Maria or I can believe that our dream trip has come to an end!  Dave and Sue, Gold Looper friends of ours from Manana, met us at our slip and helped us load up the car so we could make a quick dash home for my Mom’s funeral.  Here are some interesting facts that I collected during our trip:  Our loop lasted 391 days, we travelled 6,788 miles, we spent $13,700 on fuel (4,690 gallons of fuel), we put 770 hours on our engines, $9,700 on marinas (158 nights on anchor, 16 nights on a mooring ball, 176 nights at marinas and 40 nights at free docks), our repairs amounted to $6,500 and in total we spent $51,000 for our Great Loop trip.  Note that all the dollar amounts are a mix of both Canadian and US funds.  I might scare myself if I converted all the US costs to Canadian!  We collected 145 boat cards and met many other boaters that did not have them … It was a very social trip.  I have many other statistics however I don’t want to bore you with details.  We really enjoyed the trip and if you ask us if we’d do it again our answer would be “Yes”, however not for a few years.  Thanks for following our blog and it’s time to say Goodbye, Farewell, ….  Over and Out.
Hold on … we can’t say goodbye yet … we haven’t put up a picture with us and our Gold Looper flag … Hopefully we can get to this sometime after the family matters we need to deal with.  Stay tuned for our final post sometime in the future!

Tight quarters on the Trent waterway

The Kirkfield Lift Lock

The Waubic ... Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to stop and say Hi

Everyone knows this lock .... Yep, you are right ... Big Chute

Our view from our celebration dinner - We are Gold Loopers!

Georgian Bay is calm ... It's welcoming us to our new home

We managed to fit this stuff into our son's car that he left for us at the marina