The Great Loop
The Great Loop is a circumnavigation of the eastern U.S., and part of Canada. The route includes the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the New York State Canals, the Canadian Canals, the Great Lakes, the inland rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico. "Loopers" take on this adventure of a lifetime aboard their own boat, which in our case is the Happy Destiny.
We started our Great Loop Adventure in Venice, Florida on the Gulf of Mexico. You can start a Loop from anywhere around the loop as long as you leave your home port at the right time of the year. People start from lots of places. Michigan, Canada, Ohio, New York, Mississippi. If you have a boat and you want to do Americas Great Loop, with a lot of planning the dream can be yours! Some people do a partial loop. Life is in session. Some people still work. Some have family obligations. These people might cruise for a few weeks or months at a time. Go home, take care of their business and then pick up where they left off at some point.
Jim and I want to do the whole Loop over the next 9 months to a year. Because we started a bit late, we are playing catch up right now which doesn’t leave us much time to wander and sight see. The Great Loop is done with the seasons. We don’t want to be caught in the Canadian part of the loop when the cold weather is imminent. We need to be through Canada and down Lake Michigan by Labor Day. By the time we would get to the Mississippi River it would be the beginning of fall and the weather would just be crisp, but not snowing! It is summer time right now. We are headed north. We have decided that if we have to rush to much, we will just go to the Chesapeake Bay Area and enjoy getting to know our boat. We can anchor out and explore instead of hurrying to beat the weather. Then we will go back to Florida for the winter. The Bahamas in the winter sounds great! Then we will start the Great Loop again, on time, in early February and enjoy all the places we are missing right now.
Map of America’s Great Loop
This is how you do the Great Loop.
The green line represents Spring Time. We want to “Spring” up the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway. February to June. The Loopers who started where we did in Florida or the Bahamas have already arrived in Virginia and are about to get up into New York and start their trips into Canada for the summer months. Jim and I just got to South Carolina. This is why we are moving along and not stopping to sightsee and explore the cities we have been to in the last few weeks. Trust me, I would love to wander through St. Augustine, Savannah, and Hilton Head. Maybe next time!
The red line represents Summer. June to September. During this part of the loop we will travel on the Chesapeake Bay, The C&D Canal, The Atlantic Ocean from Cape May to New York Harbor, which is where you will see a picture of me crying as Jim and I cross in front of the Statue of Liberty on our very own Happy Destiny Boat! The Hudson River is next followed by the Oswego Canal, Lake Ontario, The Trent-Severn Canal, The Georgian Bay, Down Lake Michigan and into Chicago Illinois. We want to be in Chicago by Labor Day.
The blue line represents the Fall. September through November. The Great Loop is done in this direction, counter clockwise, so that you are going with the current, not against it, on the rivers we will go through during this time. We will go from Chicago down the Illinois River, The Mississippi River, The Ohio River, The Tennessee River, The Tenn-Tom Waterway, The Tombigbee Waterway, and will end up in Mobile Bay.
Continuing on the blue line we will continue our winter trip across the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, November through February, which by the way, is the only time we actually will be in the ocean. This is a trip that you must do with a “weather window”. There is no place to stop during this crossing. It will take as many as 20 hours to do this crossing. Both Jim and I will take turns at the helm for this trip. Resting when we can. The good news is, there are other loopers that have to make this trip too, and the norm is to caravan across the Gulf of Mexico. This part of the journey will take us back to Florida and to our home port in Venice, where we will “cross our wake”. Crossing your wake is a very big deal. It means you have completed the 5000 plus mile journey of a lifetime successfully!
We will have traversed by lakes, rivers, canals, and oceans through these States-
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Quebec, Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and the Bahamas (I hope). We will have gone through over 100 Locks, and we will have bragging rights that the two of us had a dream, planned the dream, executed the dream and finally- Lived The Dream!
I hope this helped you to understand America’s Great Loop. It really is a fantastic journey. We both feel blessed to have this opportunity of a lifetime.
Here are some pictures from our journeys the past few days.
Peace and all our love
❤️
