Full of anticipation and excitement starting our Great Loop, we had no idea what surprises lay in store! Now as Gold Loopers, we wouldn’t trade the last 12 months for anything, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some unexpected lessons along the way!
1. What do you mean, I have to COOK??? In our previous lives, we never ate out. But on the Loop… we enjoyed local cuisine more than we probably have in the last 12 years! Literally. We had a rule to try whatever was local — and there was SO much we wanted to experience, we ate out a thousand times more than anticipated. Now that we’re done every day I think “you mean I have to figure out something to make for dinner?” Ugh.
2. Some of the COOLEST Cruising in the World. We’ve cruised alot of places, all around the Western Caribbean to Cartagena, Colombia, Belize, the San Blas Islands of Panama, the Bay Islands. But we didn’t have a concept of how cool and much fun the Trent Severn was, how enjoyable the little towns would be and especially how friendly everyone was. Another big surprise was how CLEAN everything in Ontario is.
They say that Georgian Bay and The North Channel is the best freshwater cruising in the world, we’d have to disagree. In our book, cruising there is some of the best CRUISING in the world, period.
And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention how amazing it was to cruise the Chicago River amongst Chicago’s skyscrapers in our own boat. If you don’t have a Loop boat yet, don’t buy one that doesn’t let you enjoy this part of the Loop! (Ours is for sale, and meets the criteria nicely … FYI.).
3. Yet another marina. But wait, we need to stop here, our friends are in that marina, ready for docktails & other local adventures. A combination of factors kept us using marinas much more often than anticipated. Local attractions are more easily visited with a marina courtesy car and there’s always docktails. We totally didn’t expect to find one of the best marinas in the world in Quinte West, Ontario – Trent Port Marina – be sure to stop and try out their amazing “pods” – individual shower/restroom facilities that put ALL others to shame.
4. Why don’t my clothes fit right anymore? Looper Life leads to another unexpected issue. Too much fun and too little “real” exercise! Eating out and docktails aren’t conducive to staying in shape. We expected more hiking and biking and less walking to docktails. I guess our commitment to staying in shape wasn’t quite enough to overcome our Looper Life. Others managed, us, not so much.
5. Do we really NEED a dinghy? We wouldn’t be without our fast (9.8) dinghy. But until we got back to Florida, except for anchoring in the North Channel, our dinghy wasn’t used as much as we expected. After arriving back in Florida, the dinghy has had a workout. Much more dinghy exploring here than other places. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to use the dinghy, but when anchoring, we were usually moving on the next day, so we weren’t inclined to get it off and explore for an hour before dark. On the rivers, we just wanted to keep moving. In Apalachicola and Carrabelle, we might have wanted it off … but too often with the dinghy on the top at a dock, it’s impossible to get in the water.
6. On The Move. In 330 days on the Loop, we moved 118 or 1 in 3. Which doesn’t sound like alot until you realize twice we had to stop to return home making our ratio more like 1 in 1.5. We should have slowed down, but David refused to consider another summer away from our lake house. So we kept moving. Even though we tried not to move more than 4-6 hours a day max, it’s amazing how tiring being on the move daily can become.
7. Time Committed to Navigation & Tides/Currents Timing. We were both surprised at how much time was committed to navigation – where do we want to go tomorrow and then preparing the route in the GPS/AquaMaps. In certain areas, we also had to factor in Tides and Currents considerations to time the route correctly. Why did that always seem to mean I had to set an alarm to get up WAY before a civilized time?
8. Weather. Once again, as in our past cruising days, weather dictated our lives. This wasn’t totally unexpected, the unexpected part was how little weather affected the rivers and canals. We could move on days we’d never have considered moving if we were crossing the Gulf or on the Atlantic approach to New York Harbor. On the other hand, the weather was significantly more a factor than anticipated coming down the western Michigan coastline – we’d have one day to move and then need to sit for 3 days to a week before Lake Michigan settled enough for us to move on.
9. The Local Things. Like don’t plan to rent a car along the western Michigan coast… we kept getting “stuck” for weather in places we would have enjoyed renting a car to explore a national park nearby… but it’s not to be. The huge tidal swings in N. Florida/Georgia and the Carolinas caused us to be sitting in the mud along in Amelia Island and Jacksonville, Florida. We spent much more time planning departures and arrivals than we ever guessed. Also, the tides and currents caused us to be very specific in our questions when we called a marina to make a reservation. We never anticipated our 4′ draft would be an issue at all.
10. Traffic. Traffic is never as bad as on I-75 down Florida, driving is thousands of times more dangerous. For the Loop, we anticipated that there would be alot of boat/ship/tub traffic on the Florida AICW, and THOUGHT we had anticipated the traffic on New York Harbor. New York Harbor had more traffic than we could have EVER imagined. But it was all OK. Another biggie: we didn’t realize how much commercial barge traffic used the Western Rivers and how twisty those waterways were – SO glad we had send and receive AIS, we would never recommend anyone do the waterways without it.
11. Devastation Caused by Hurricane Michael. On October 7, 2018, the 2nd strongest hurricane ever to hit the Gulf Coast caused massive devastation. We were in the river system and slowed deliberately hoping to still be able to spend some time in that area. We underestimated by far the impact and devastation the hurricane caused. The ICW reopened and we did traverse that area, but very little was open and we saw more devastation than I ever want to see again.
12. The Burgee. LooperLife = Lifelong Friends. We didn’t expect that our little white AGLCA burgee would have such an impact on our Great Loop. We’re grateful that we met so many wonderful Loopers, so many helpful Harbor Hosts and even a few new lifelong friends. WOW!
Anything you didn’t anticipate on your Great Loop? Please leave a comment and share for those in your wake!
Cheers! Jan & David, proud to be Gold Loopers aboard m/v Optimystique
Trent Severn has always been one of my favorite boating routes. My inlaws had a cottage up in Kawarthas.