The NFCT map on their site shows long portage to Long Lake is now 3 portages and paddle between. Roughly half portage, half paddle.
On paper that is technically correct. i tried breaking the portage to LL like that once. And only once. And I was not even in any 20 hour Cannonball hurry at the time, just on a leisurely week long camping trip to Plattsburgh with a Hornbeck before the NFCT even formally existed. I hated it and swore I would never do that series of portage/paddles from Forked to LL again.
Do it that way if you wish, you can choose to paddle amongst the multiple segments of easy open paddling and then the sudden encounters of rock gardens and look for where to exit and enter the muddy bank over and over again, climbing up the slope toward the road to go around rocky shallow segments, wasting far more time and effort with banging, and scratching of canoe skin than it is ever worth attempting.
I've paddled the Cannonball 13 times and after that one time to Plattsburgh, I would never consider breaking up the simple long easy road carry to LL ever again.
Have wheels. Based on the NFCT maps only one portage not wherlable.
That would be the first 80% of the Raquette Falls Carry where you go faster by hand carrying wheels than wheeling them.
You got the distance approximately correct. Five days should be more than doable.
My trip to Plattsburgh was in a 10.5' Hornbeck, single tripping carries with all gear in a Knupac, not paddling a racing pace by any means. Full distance on a diagonal across the Adirondacks, from 20 miles west of the blue line to Pburgh was 185 miles total, including 62 accumulated miles of carries on a hot buggy dry low water July week of exactly 7 days door to door (my home to daughter's home across the big lake to near the ferry launch)
