Inital Timing

Thanks to various posts on SailNet we knew that we could expect to spend between 18 and 30 days on the lakes to get to Buffalo and another 10 on the Erie Canal and Hudson river to get to New York. Unfortunately we weren't able to take that much time off work and as a result we decided that Buffalo would be a reasonable point to aim for.

We needed to leave Milwuakee before the Milwuakee Summerfest (as loads of boaters come to Milwuakee) and so the 27th of June was the latest we could start.

We decided that I would arrive a week before that date to help with the outstanding work. So with the 20th as my arrival date we simply added up the days and figured on arriving to Buffalo around Monday 16th so I could get back to Chicago for a flight on the 18th, that way I was away from Barcelona for a calender month - 19th to the 19th.

So we now had a plan and dates to go with it, next was to check that we had everything we needed.