The "Great Loop"

Plans have been finalized to leave on April15, 2007, to do the "Great Loop". This trip goes up the East Coast, mostly in the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) up to New York, up the Hudson River to the Erie Canal, west on the Erie to the Oswego River to Oswego, NY, into Lake Ontario, across the lake to Trenton, Ontario, through the Trent-Severn Waterway over the top of Toronto, into Georgian Bay, tom the North Channel, south into Lake Michigan to Chicago, down the Illinois Ship Canal to the Illinois River, to the Mississippi River, south to the Ohio River, up the Ohio to the Tennessee River, up the Tennessee to the Tenn-Tom Canal to Mobile, AL, east to Florida in the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, south to Key West, north east op to Miami, and then north up the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway back home. The trip will take us some 6500 miles and we are planning 11 months for the voyage. As our plans become definitive, we will post our progress. ODYSSEE pulled away from our dock at11:30 AM today, April 16 and is now in Charleston at the American Great Loop Cruisers' Association rendezvous. The storm that went through the SE and then up the east coast created gale force winds, delaying our departure. On top of that, Claria fell in the boat on Saturday and sprained her right thumb, so she is still in Beaufort doctoring that situation. We plan to leave Charleston on Friday to head up the east coast.

The New Interior

We knew from the beginning, as we looked at 40' plus boats, that most of them had the galley down and forward. The only boat we had seen with the galley up was a Roughwater 42. There were two for sale, one in SanDiago and the other in Seattle and the cost to get them to the SE coast was prohibative. We felt that we could modify the interior of a Hatteras 43 Double Cabin and move the galley up. The plan was to move the galley up to the starboard aft corner of the salon, convert the front half of the old galley to a laundry, and to expand the salon forward into the aft half of the old galley and add a nav station desk. A little layout work confirmed this would all work.

So we hired Randall Peters, a cabinet maker who had built a custom mahogany office for our house, to work with Chuck full time on this interior modification. Randall moved into our guest house and set his shop up in our garage.



Looking forward in the galley before we started, the large cabinet is actually the enclosure around the old, original refrigerator, yes the original 35 year old Fridgidare was still working, just barely. It had been put in the boat before the deck/cabin was placed on the hull. There was no opening large enough to get it out, so we dissasembled it into 6 pieces to remove it. The two grills to the right of the cabinet are the air conditioning ducts, keep them in mind for reference.


In the old galley we have installed a washer/dryer where the old sink was and an additional hanging closet where the stove top and oven used to be.

This picture shows the new nav station desk enclosure, where the refrigerator cabinet once was. Note the air conditioner duct just visible over the top of the new counter top.

The new Washer/Dryer is installed in the front half of the old galley, just to the front of the new desk back.

The galley has now moved up to the aft starboard corner of the salon. These two pictures are before and after the galley is just about finished with the new corian counter top, refrigerator, GE Advantiam oven, sink, cook top, and cabinet doors installed.

Here Chuck starts to lay Sound Down, a sound deadening foam, on the salon floor over the top of the propulsion engines and generator before the teak and holley is laid.

Back in the new galley, the center island has been removed, per design, and the starboard engine hatches are removed so Sound Down and flooring can be installed.

Now the tong and grooved teak, 2 1/2" wide, and the tong and grooved holly, 1/2" wide, is starting to be laid. Here you can see the center island that has been removed on the right hand side of the picture.

Here is a picture of the floor completed, but yet to be finished with 5 coats of two part high gloss polyurethane.



Here is a picture of the completed floor with five coats of two part polyurethane. You can see we have started moving furniture back aboard.

Here's the reupholstered L shaped couch back in the boat. The table in the foreground houses the trash compactor.

The master suite is done complete with new drapes, new matresses, new wallpaper and corian sink top in the head, and teak and holly floor.

The quest quarters up in the bow are also complete.

New instrument panel that Chuck has fabricated out of DekOLite.

Chuck standing next to a full length bench seat being added accross the back of the sun deck. This is also fabricated from DekOLite and only weighs about 80 pounds.

ODYSSEE just about ready to go!

The Right Boat

As we researched the water depth and bridge clearances of the canals and rivers in the eastern part of the Continent, it became evident that a boat with less than 15' bridge clearance and drew less than 4' of water would virtually go anywhere. We also wanted a hard top over us, one helm station, twin engines, moderated cruising speed capability of 14-16 knots, and a keel as the lowest part of the boat structure. Early in our search we discovered the Hatteras 43 Double Cabin. Hatteras built this boat from 1967 to 1987, producing close to 2000 boats. The early boats, built from 1967 to 1974 came with only one helm station over the aft bedroom suite. You can see an original copy of the sales brochure at www.hatterasowners.com, click on Brochures Archive, then 43 Double Cabin, series 1. In 1974 Hatteras added a top fly bridge as an option mounted on top of original helm station, and most boats built after 1974 included that fly bridge. Through the internet boat listing service, Yacht World.com we found quite a few listings for this boat. We ultimately bought a boat located on the north shore of Lake Pontchartran near New Orleans. It is a 1971 model, hull number 313. The boat had never been docked in salt water and went through hurricane Katrina with out any damage or water into the living quarters. In May we brought the boat home, 1350 miles and 15 days. All major systems worked very well with only a couple of minor problems, but nothing that held us up. Everybody that knows much about old boats was amazed that we didn't have some problems on this maiden trip. We have renamed the boat "ODYSSEE" (od-a-see what we are doing!).

Introduction: The Adventure

For several years Chuck and Claria have dreamt of cruising the rivers and canals of the eastern United States and Canada in a power boat. Our boating experiences started early for both of us, having grown up living on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, boating with our parents, and later racing sailboats all over the country. This dream was reinforced when, on several regatta trips to Bobcaygeon, Ontario to race our M-20, we would see boats from the Southeastern United States passing through the Trent Severn Waterway from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron. Then we bought the book, "Honey, Let's Get a Boat", the story of a couple doing the Great Loop. We were hooked!

Over the years we would charter bare boats, both power and sail, in the coastal waters of the US and in the Great Lakes. In this process we realised that we would need a boat of at least 40' to be comfortable for extended cruising. We subscribed to "PassageMaker" to learn what we could about boats and extended cruising.

As we looked ahead to retirement, we selected the SE coast, somewhere between Charleston, SC and Jacksonville, FL as the ideal place to settle where we would have good access to the Intracoasteal Waterway. In the mid 1990s we discovered Beaufort, SC and fell in love with this historic town, later discovering Distant Island and Distant Island Creek. When the property started to sell in 1999, we were standing in line for a lot on Claire's Point, which we were able to buy. We finished our new house and moved onto Distant Island in the fall of 2001. We were set, we had our home on the water and a dock that could accommodate a 40' boat, 3/4 of a mile from the Intracoastal Waterway. Now all we needed was the boat.