Our Voyage through the Down East Circle Route

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Our Route

We will leave Cape Cod (Bosun's Marine in Falmouth) with the boat on May 20, head SW along MA, RI and CT shorelines to Bronx, NY and stay at a marina there for the night. That's a 185 mile run. We'll then cruise around the Statue of Liberty, lower Manhattan, etc. the next day and then head up the Hudson River. We'll spend next 5 days on the Hudson River. Just above Albany, NY, at Waterford, NY we'll enter the Erie Canal and head west for about 160 miles, spending several days on the canal, including crossing Lake Oneida (20 miles long) and we'll get almost to Syracuse, NY where we will take the Oswego Canal north 24 miles to Lake Ontario. We will then head east along southern shore of Lake Ontario to headwaters of St. Lawrence River and the Thousand Islands area. There is lots boating and water activities in this area. We will then head over 740 east downstream on the St. Lawrence River to the ocean, stopping at cities like Montreal and Quebec City and many smaller towns along the way. At the town of Tadoussac, about 140 miles downstream from Quebec City, we'll head north up the Saguenay Fjord for a side-trip and back. We'll then continue east to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River with the Gaspe peninsula (Quebec Province) to our south. We'll round the Gaspe and head south along the Bay of Chaleurs to New Brunswick, stopping in towns such as Caraquet, Newcastle and Chatham, Bouctouche and Shediac before heading east and crossing the Northumberland Strait to Summerside, Prince Edwards Island. From there we'll cruise to Charlottetown, PEI, tour the island, and then head to Nova Scotia, going through the Canso Strait and Canal/lock to Port Hawkesbury. From there we'll head east to St. Peters and then into the beautiful Bras d'Or Lake (60 miles long) where we will go through the locks and head all the way to Sydney at the far tip of Nova Scotia. From there we will head south and west along the Nova Scotia coastline to visiting towns like Halifax, Lunenburg, Lockeport, Shelburne and finally Yarmouth at the very western tip on NS. From there we'll cross the Bay of Fundy to Bar Harbor, Maine (a 100 mile crossing). We'll then follow the coast west along Maine stopping in places like Camden, Booth Bay Harbor, Portland and Portsmouth, NH and then finally to Gloucester, Salem and Boston before heading through the Cape Cod Canal to Buzzards Bay and finally back to Falmouth on Cape Cod.

The total trip as we have planned it will be 3,500 miles.