Hello friends and family! I wish I had better news, but first let me bring you up to speed on the events of yesterday before the plan moving forward. I was finishing up on the St Clair River, just about to enter Lake Huron when Neverland suddenly just stopped moving […]
Update: Sept 16
Currently at a nice marina in Port Huron having an issue with the transmission. Hoping it’s minor!
A Long and Successful Day
 Hello friends and family! Today started at 6 AM, as I got up and tried to assess the problem on Neverland with the alternator. Turns out it just needed a belt, and I just happened to have one! At 7:20 I left my anchorage and headed towards Detroit. I […]
Just Me and Neverland
First solo trip! Hello family and friends! I left work yesterday afternoon at 5 and pointed the rental car north and drove until I was only about 100 miles from Neverland. After 4 hours sleep at the rest area (not great sleep as you can imagine) I drove the last […]
Mother Nature Has Entered the Chat
Good afternoon, friends and family! The weather this morning looked fairly scary, as winds were blowing around 20 mph at our anchorage behind the breakwater wall. We could see out into Lake Erie and it looked rather nasty. Not wanting to press our luck, we decided to seek shelter at […]
A Long Day on Lake Erie
Good evening family and friends! This will be short, as we are exhausted. All repairs done and checked out, we waited a bit for the wind to die down some before heading out around 11:00 am. I made a less than graceful exit from the dock, bumping the stern against […]
Update: Sept 4
Jackson and I have just ordered dinner at a nice restaurant next to the marina. Mike (our Erie mechanic) wants to make sure a repair he made in a small leak is sound before we head out..and I’m inclined to agree with him. So hopefully we will get everything checked […]
Sept 4 Update
After a long few days in the road, we are anxiously awaiting a couple of leisurely days on the water! We arrived at the marina last night and opened up the windows on Neverland and started making preparations to have the boat launched in the water today. We are behind […]
Boatyard Work Weekend
After a LONG drive to Erie, I was able to get an in depth look at the damage we suffered to the stern tube. It looks a little worse than I had anticipated, unfortunately. I’ll be making some inquiries as to repairs and hopefully Neverland will be back in the […]
Happy 50th Birthday, Neverland!
On April 20, 2023, Neverland turned the big FIVE 0!
Thanks for the Memories, New York
Hello friends and family! Sorry for the late update, but we had a very long and busy day yesterday! The morning started off with us grabbing coffee in the rain at a store near the Public Dock in Dunkirk, NY. As the dark skies slowly became a little lighter, we […]
Hello Lake Erie
Hi friends and family! Today started at first light, as we were shooting for a rather optimistic target for mileage. We cast off and started the last little bit of the Erie Canal. Things were going well until we reached Buffalo. We found that Black Rock Lock that bypasses the […]
Low Bridges, Everybody Down
“..low bridges, everybody down, low bridges cause we’re coming to town..” Hello friends and family! That line is from the Erie Canal song I learned in 4-H in 4th grade. Today we went under 12 drawbridges, and that song was stuck in my head all day. We started the day […]
Go West
Hello friends and family! It has been a LONG two days. I’ll try to sum up as well as I can. We arrived at the marina around 1:00am on Thursday morning and quickly boarded Neverland and went straight to sleep. We had previously talked with the marina owners and they […]
The Grand Finale (for this leg)
Hello friends and family! This will be a shorter than normal post as today we made it back to Chattanooga and we are so tired we can barely think straight! Yesterday, we woke up around 6:45am which put us a little behind on time getting to the first lock around […]
Locked Up
Hello Friends and Family! This morning we woke up just before 7am to catch the lock right after Amsterdam, New York. We were expecting to have company by the time we made it down to the lock, since it is beneficial to start your day when the locks […]
West Bound and Down
Hello Friends and Family! Today started early at around 6:45am in Waterford, New York at lock #2 at the start of the Erie Canal. Right at 7:00am the first lock opened, and luckily enough we were able to squeeze behind two other boats and catch the first […]
North Bound and Down
Hello Friends and Family! We apologize for not updating the blog last night, however, after a 15 hour day on the water we were more than ready to turn in for the night. We spent the night just south of Jones Point on the Hudson River at anchorage […]
New York State of Mind
Hello Friends and Family! Today began early in the AM in New Rochelle, New York with a breakfast that consisted of calculating out the right time to hit Hell Gate which is the intersection just before Roosevelt Island where the Harlem River meets the East River. We went […]
Connecticut Set Us Free
Hello friends and family! We got an early start this morning, grabbing some fuel for our new reserve starboard fuel tank and leaving the marina at 7:15 am. Nervous is the best way to describe the morning as we headed West down Long Island Sound. Slowly, the hours passed and […]
Three Steps Forward, Three Steps Back
We’ve been stranded for days at sea, surviving on raw fish we speared with a stick whittled from a piece of deck railing…Jackson may have salmonella…losing his will to live minute by minute… Just kidding..we needed some comedy relief! We left the marina this morning at 10:45 after the mechanic […]
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
Good evening family and friends! We launched this morning around 9:30. The guys with the lift are really interesting to watch as they haul the boat to the lift site. All systems go! Neverland started right up and we did a quick check on the transmission before heading out to […]
Ready for Launch, We Think
Good morning, family and friends. A long couple of days behind us. We arrived in Connecticut on Sunday afternoon and spent most of it continuing to finish up with the mechanical work. On Monday, the goal was to pull the flywheel to check behind it. We needed to make sure […]
Repairing the Damper Plate
Spent the weekend changing out the broken damper plate. What a job! Things went fairly well, although I ended up spending a LOT of time on a stuck bellhousing bolt, and then needed to construct a small crane to help lift the transmission out of the way. I ran out […]
Afternoon UPDATE
Well, bad news. The boat cannot be fixed immediately. We will need to track down the part and see when it can be lined up for installation. So the boat is going to be here in Connecticut for a time. It’s sad, but we are really thankful that Neverland will […]
Morning UPDATE
Ready to head out at 6:00 am this morning. When we placed the boat in gear, we heard a disturbing sound coming from the engine room. Based on what it sounded like, I think we’ve lost the flex plate that sits like a clutch between the engine and transmission. A […]
Faked Out
Hi friends and family! Got an early start today and it paid off! Woke at 4:45 am and pulled up anchor at 5:25 am. We hit the Atlantic when she was in a very good mood, nice and calm..and even glassy when we got to Fishers Island. We put in […]
And so it begins!
Hi friends and family! Totally exhausted so this will be quick. We really wanted to get an early start, but mother nature had different plans. FOG. We woke up to a real pea-souper. We didn’t even fire the engine up until 9:30, and even then we had to proceed very […]
A Quick Shakedown Run
A quick little 30 minute run down the Providence River before rafting Neverland up with Neil’s boat Brasil.