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My 12 year old and I are planning a trip that will take us 981 miles from the Pittsburgh to Cairo Ill. The whole run of the Ohio river in 22 days in our Belhaven. Yea I know that is a long time in a small craft with a 12 year old. But I love adventures and she is getting older. Before I know it she won't want to spend much time with dad! So I dreamed this up a few weeks ago and ran it by her. The first thing she said was, I will be away from my friends how long! I knew at that moment that time is short I must act fast.

The wife agreed to drop us off May 23rd. She did so kind of quickly which I think should concern me. But I'am not going to give it another thought.

Now the hard part, planning a trip this long takes more thought than I like. Battery capacity, food, water, fuel, safety, and keeping a 12 year old interested for 22 days.

My brother has offered a cruising guide for the Ohio which I accepted.

I believe there are 53 locks to lock through which will be a first for me.

I am in the process of installing a tiller pilot which I think will come in handy because we must make 40 plus miles a day. I just don't want to sit with that stick in my hand for ten hours a day. Just being able to move about and do a few things and stretch a bit will be nice.

We have some safety drills to do before we head out along with some other education.

We have 420 reserve amps, so we will have to manage somewhat our power use. The tiller pilot is supposed to use .5 to 1.5 amps and the anchor light uses .83 those will be our big users of power. So I am hoping to be able to replenish the batterys at least once a week.

I plan to motor hard on the calm or nasty days to give us more time when the sailing is good and to also take advantage of the few good ports along the river. Our Belhaven with a 4.5 hp will do 7 to 8 mph with the currant so on calm days we can get 80 miles under our belt.

We all know that 40 miles under sail is better than 200 miles motoring. I plan to sail every mile I can get at least 3 mph, which don't take much wind on a beam.

I know some of you have taken adventures with your little ones so any advice is welcome. Please!

I'll add some more to this as it developes.

Two other important idems for me on this trip is if any of you are near the Ohio river we would truly love to meet up with you for the evening. Also with my wifes writing education Jordyn and I plan to send a story of our adventure to Small Craft Adviser. I will post my cell number if anyone is interested in meeting up along the way.

Scott

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Now the hard part, planning a trip this long takes more thought than I like. Battery capacity, food, water, fuel, safety, and keeping a 12 year old interested for 22 days.

I am in the process of installing a tiller pilot which I think will come in handy because we must make 40 plus miles a day. I just don't want to sit with that stick in my hand for ten hours a day. Just being able to move about and do a few things and stretch a bit will be nice.

I know some of you have taken adventures with your little ones so any advice is welcome. Please!

Scott

Sailing with a young daughter is great stuff Scott,

Daughter Jennifer (13 yrs at the time) and I did a delivery sail of our Olson 30 from Oyster Bay, Long Island to Salem, Mass during April spring vacation, we made a lot of stops and side trips and it turned into a three week adventure -it was 300 or so miles (all sailing, no working engine).

I learned that it is better to give the kids more responsibility rather than less, Jennifer did perhaps 60% of the driving and 40% of the navigation (we had lots of poor visibility and days of fog at a time, no GPS on my boats in those days, it was all dead reckoning which requires constant monitoring of time and distance), she learned to do both as we went along.

The trip would have been useless if I let her be a casual observer instead of a co-skipper.

I would urge you to abandon plans to use an autopilot (not sure how useful that would be on a river anyway) and plan to make her a full time co-skipper to share the helming duties. Same for  sharing galley chores and navigation duty, have no doubt that the responsibility will do wonders for her.

I wrote up our trip for Oar Club, ,you can read lots more of the details here

http://www.voy.com/153904/4573.html

Assuming you want to enjoy the trip - your plan of 981 miles seems way too ambitious for a three week time frame  Plan less, let it happen as you go along, make her a part of deciding what to do.

If you must limit the number of days on the boat then maybe even plan for getting picked up  at a an alternate location (or two) along the planned track and trailer it home from there. Or pick the best 300/400 miles for gunkholing and see more of the sights along the way. You need to have room for some days off along the way - especially if there's a few days in a row of bad weather (which would seem more likely than not). There's little sense in making it a marathon of stress and strain if you get slowed down along the way, it would likely become a family disaster. Half the miles and twice the fun is a better recipe in my eyes.

All the best,

TomH

P.S.  I love your Belhaven - probably (definitely) a better cruiser that the Olson30

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Scott,

You are making a great sacrifice for your daughter.  Yeah, right?

I agree with everything Tom had to say about time and distance and also about getting Jordyn involved in running and navigating the boat.  Your biggest issue may be what to do about her cell phone.  Having done trips in larger sailboats of equal or greater distance in the ICW, I think you will spend all your time trying to hold to schedule.  80 miles will probably have the crew on mutiny and the skipper forced out on the plank at sword point. It can be done of course, but the trip is for fun and getting to know your kid. 

Belhaven is definitely an equal or better small cruiser than an Olson 30 even though the Olson is much faster.  I'm sure you will accommodate to whatever is best when the time comes.  Have a great cruise.

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When my children were younger I did canoe trips with my daughter and backpacking trips with my son.  It is really important to realize that your goal of distance and completing a challenging task (the whole distance) and what your daughter wants are almost assuredly 2 very different things.  It may be hard to do, it was for me.  So I highly recommend you pay heed to TomH's post and take it to heart.  Your daughter is only going to be 13 once.  This trip can be the adventure of a life time, or the bitter experience Dad forced her to take.  Let her choose.  And even then, be ready to modify the plan along the way. 

It sounds like a great trip, can I come?  ::)

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I sail on the River (mississippi) and dont think I have enough open water stretches to make a tiller pilot cost effective..  Your 12 year old would probably enjoy spotting you.

I also have a tiller lock  (cam style from canada)  that is quite useful..  I'll go 1/2 mile stretch or so before I need much of a correction.

Small boats in particular are very susceptible to changes in balance when crew moves about, and the tiller pilot would maybe be better than the tiller lock at compensating for this, but overall  I'm not sure I'd go to the expense.

John

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I would definitely go with a tiller pilot. Being stuck that long for so many days will get to be torture, even with two of you. You might even consider a remote control with it. I had one on a 25' cord when I singlehanded my 28 footer often. It was great to sit out on the bow and make course corrections when needed without having to scramble back and forth. Especially when motoring for long stretches.

Sounds like a great adventure. I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with others who recommend not making a given distance your goal. Make your plans each evening and change them the next day as warranted. Sharing the planning could be a great experience; be willing to be flexible. End up where you end up and explore along the way as you wish. It would be a great loss to reach the end (or even abort the trip) having missed opportunities along the way to enrich both your lives simply to meet a meaningless distance goal. River cities can be great places to explore and meet people along the way. That was a great part of my cruising adventures.

Heck, getting from here to there is what cars are for.

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What you all have said is true. I have taken her to the ten thousand islands twice with pretty good results. But we mostly only sail 2 to 4 hours at a time and then she is running all over the what ever island we are at. I have taken her for a few 4 day outings on the river and she has done fine. But three weeks is a long time even for a girl that can get lost in a book for the day. My wife has voiced some of the same things you all have brought up.

So we have been talking about plan B 8) We can leave our own home port on the Ohio river and sail to Kentucky Lake which is about 400 mile round trip. It would give us a much more layed back time and the land between the lakes is packed full of stuff for a young one.

I haven't ruled out the long trip but been putting a lot of thought into plan B.

I guess I was thinking of not only another outing, but an accomplishment that she can have under her belt. Being able to tell her kids yea me and my dad sailed the whole length of the Ohio river in a boat that we built.

I have to do the Ohio river trip sometime and it will more than likely be by myself. In fact I plan to retire in July so September may be a good time.

As for the tiller pilot, Yea I know its only a small boat and unnecessary. That said, Don't matter its going in. My brother uses one on the river and loves it. He uses it as a stand alone and not hooked up to gps. We don't have big open water and have to keep an eye for toll boats but there are plenty of stretchs of water 3 to 4 mile where we can use them. There are a lot of times in the summer when we have light winds and may only be doing 2 to 3 mph so being able to go up on the bow for a while would be nice. Or going down below to hunt up that favorite cd, making lunch, coffee or just stretching out. I'll let you know how it works out.

Scott

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Scott, I agree with everything that's been said.  With my boys, I also try to keep in mind the need to get ashore regularly.  At least one prolonged stop a day is my rule.  I can stay afloat for days at a time if I'm trying to cover distance, but the kids need more opportunity to stretch those legs.

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