Q's End: Heading for Another Adventure

Hi Everyone

Late this summer Linda and I will be taking off again on our boat Q's End. This time we are not coming back, well at least not for a year anyway. We are finally going to start America's Great Loop. This is a preliminary message to create a distribution list for those friends who are interested in receiving periodic emails about our trip and what we are doing. I know some of you might get annoyed by receiving emails from me but I also know that more of you cannot get enough of me..., or at least my emails. For some of our new friends who have not yet had the opportunity to follow one of our trips, I have sent out a series of emails for our boat trips in 2005 (The Ontario Loop) and 2008 (Lake Huron). You can actually read these things if you go to my new blogspot.

www.qsend.blogspot.com

To my fans, I have a bit of a dilemma. I can write my updates directly to the blog or I can send out emails with the story and then move them to the blogspot. I am going to use that site as a record of the trip and perhaps augment it with additional photos and information. Call me old fashioned but the trouble with blogs is that the chronology sucks. It is hard to follow a story or trip when each chapter is put in front of the previous chapter. So if you go to the site to catch up on the earlier trips be sure to read each entry in the proper sequence, that is, read the oldest entry first then the next oldest etc. I tried to follow a few Loopers on their journeys this year and had trouble keeping up to date especially when entries are posted irregularly. I will start off by sending the info to you but I may in some cases just send out a notice that there is a new posting on the blog. As we go along, please let me know what works best.

Well you can probably tell that this is another rainy day...that is why I am in here typing instead of polishing the boat or golfing or enjoying yet another dock party. The last rainy day, created the blog so do not expect much. It was my first attempt.

About the trip: I started thinking about doing the Great Loop when we were still in Ottawa. Al and I frequently discussed this at our "business" lunches and it was he who found the AGLCA, America's Great Loop Cruising Association. We have been members for the past few years. I say "I" wanted to do the Great Loop because Linda was less enthusiastic. At first there were a number of conditions like the need for a bow thruster (to make life easier for her) and a dinghy. We took care of both those items last year. Then it was just uncertainty about whether or not we could handle the boating portion of the 6,000 mile trip. This last hurdle was overcome at last October's AGLCA Fall Rendezvous in Alabama. Here Linda had an opportunity to talk to literally a hundred or more people who were currently doing the loop or had already done the loop. It was not long before she was convinced. Everyone, bar none, said it is a trip of a lifetime and you have to do it. Linda spoke to many of the other Captain's about the worst part of the trip "boating wise" and they all said the Great Lakes. When Linda told them that we had circumnavigated Lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron and that we already had done the Trent-Severn, they assured her that we could handle the boating without any problems. Thus the planning began.

I will provide more updates as time goes along but for now please let me know if you would like to receive the emails about our trip and please let me know if any corrections are needed for your email address. Hopefully my address book is up to date. If you hear of someone who would like to follow just have them drop me a line.

Tom and Linda
Q's End

btw: This has been our earliest launch ever; we have been in the water for 2 weeks already.