Back home in Chattanooga! There wasn’t a good weather window opening up anytime soon in Michigan, so I’ve come home to do some planning for the next week or so before making a return trip!

Spent the day putting down a much needed coat of Kiwi Grip anti slip paint on the deck. Didn’t quite get finished with the fly bridge or the aft deck but I should be able to knock it out in the morning!

Today started early, Molly and I got started about 7am and worked til Noon when we had to make the 45 min trip to West Marine to pick up some paint. Storms rolling in tonight so we’ll be hunkered down at the KOA tonight in the PaddyWagon. Tomorrow will be […]

Spent an entire day doing work on Neverland. First I oiled all the exterior woodwork with teak oil. Not sure i’m totally satisfied with the look, I wanted it to be a little darker. Also did some minor plumbing repair and got the new dark blue stern decal on!

Lots to do today, the first order of business was removing the shrink wrap. I seem to have a small water leak, something must have frozen over the winter. Otherwise, the systems are looking pretty good!

Just now posting photos of the paint job I finished last fall.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

 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 […]

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 […]

 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 […]

 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 […]

        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 […]

 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 […]

 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 […]

 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 […]

 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 […]

 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 little 30 minute run down the Providence River before rafting Neverland up with Neil’s boat Brasil.