Any Members of America's Great Loop Cruisers' Association?

P

Pat Anderson

New member
Well, I know B&E are members, because Halcyon Days is listed in Members' Websites and Blogs. I think they did it on the Flicka, not sure.

So, this is something that is really high up on my list for when we retire, probably the number one thing for me (not necessarily for Patty, so I imagine there will be some negotiating here!). One thing I know, when we do it, we will not have a fixed schedule other than by seasons (I hear avoiding hurricanes is probably a good idea), so if we like some place and want to spend some time there, we will be able to.

So any good resources on AGLCA for that $50 annual memberhship? Any cruising guides or books that are absolutely "must have" for this adventure? What chips for the Raymarine am I going to need? What charts? How would you go about starting a couple of years in advance to plan this out?

Anybody else having similar thoughts for a few years down the pike? Always nice to have company...

 
Hi Pat,

Just for grins and giggles, you might want to download the podcast from furledsails.com (also available on iTunes) about the Great Loop Cruisers Association. It's episode #105, from 9/3/07.

And slightly off topic, but right in your area is the podcast about the Center for Wooden Boats (right there in Lake Union); podcast #93, from 6/10/07.

There's also the story of a couple who went down the Mississippi on a 17' open sailboat, or the guy who takes his trawler up to Alaska every year, or... well, there's a lot of interesting listening. Much of it is sail oriented, but boat stuff is boat stuff for me. :wink:

We still intend to get around the Loop... may be in parts, though.

Best wishes,
Jim
 
Pat, tell Patty that trip is one of the all time great trips. We did (most) of it in Our Journey, a sailboat with a 6' keel. We took 2 years, coming home for one winter. We went from Mobile, Ala up the ICW, and through the Great Lakes. Our Journey went all the way around the USA, from Alaska to the Great Lakes. I refused to put the mast down one more time and go down the rivers at 6 knts, so we came home from lake Michigan. One of the best trips we took: Bahamas, the East coast, Chesapeake Bay, New York, the Eire canal, the Great Lakes. The Eire Canal is the equal of the French canals, and they are the friendliest people you ever met.

The best part will be the people you cruise with. They were super and we learned a lot about the world.

Judy and I are both from So Cal, and we saw a lot of the US we'd only read about. The industrial revolution in upstate New York, all the troublemakers on the Atlantic seacoast that started our country; I mean it was an education that I wished I could have given the kids. The first motorcycle I ever owned in now in a museum in Springfield Mass. How's that for feeling old? Saw the Ringling museum in Sarisota. Wonderful trip. Wright Brothers (my heroes) memorial in North Carolina. The list goes on and on; places you never know existed. There are places in Vermont where the RICH people have farms full of antiques that were used 200 yrs ago (you pay to visit them.)


The C-25 is the best boat I can think of to take the trip. It's got shallow draft, a cabin and handles well. You can haul it home or park it and fly home. Goes through the boring stretches at 20 knts. Get an air conditioner. And don't forget the head, you'll be grateful for it.

The best guide (our bible,) was Skipper Bob, still in print: Skipper Bobs Books The guy's dead now, but those guides give all the cheap and out of the way places. We used Mapquest chartbooks for our paper trail.

Also, plan to rent a car for touring trips, since yours may not be nearby. Enterprise has a weekend special for $10/day, and they pick you up. Ever see 4 full size people in one of those little Chevvies? Saw Gettysburg that way.

Boris
 
Yes, Pat, we cruised the entire Loop before it was known as the Loop, and have done many favorite sections of it many different times since. Our first trip around was on our Flicka, and later big chunks on the C-Dory. Glad to talk about it with you folks any time - will make some great evenings in the cockpit, sipping a glass, and swinging with the tide. It is a great trip and your thought of taking your time is ideal - so many great places (and people) to visit. We were thinking of going back again this year, but various factors interfered. It's a marvelous cruise!
 
Pat,
You can never start planning this trip too early. I have been planning the same cruise since reading B&E's account nearly four years ago. It is what brought me to becoming a C-Dory owner and C-Brat. Everything I have learned from this site and from other sites on the Great Loop is stored on this computer. Maybe I need to transfer the research to another storage device before this ole gal crashes..now I think about it.

I plan on leaving in April of 2011. A C-Dory may or may not be the boat I will choose to do the trip in, but it is at the top of the list at the moment. More research needed and a lot more docks need to be walked, looking for that perfect boat.

Hope to see you out there or a the least, read your account of your Great Loop cruise.
 
Stay with it Mike - but, for us, the most important aspect of the Great Loop trip is getting aboard -- and going!! As Confucious said, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
 
Bill,
What does the old Chinaman say about a trip of 6000 miles. Does it mention anything about a giant leap?



Thank you again for the inspiration.
 
Confusius say "Man with 3 foot stride take about 10,560,000 steps according to abacus!"

So Mike is taking off in 2011 - I make it more like 2012 for Daydream and crew. And that is sort of the optimistic scenario.

What I really would like to get up on the wall is one really good, really big overall map or chart of the eastern US and Canada, showing the route. Any such critter specifically for Great Loop cruise planning exist that we know of?



El and Bill":101se7t9 said:
"Ah, journey[/color] of 6,000 miles? Begin with one small step followed by a few others..." - Confucius, 470, BC
Click to expand...
 
Damn the 30 minute editing limitation! I wanted to stick the image of the map in the last post...oh, well. Here it is.

loop01.jpg
 
El and Bill":21uw7z6f said:
Unless you plan to navigate with it, save some money, print it 8 1/2x11 and put on your glasses! 8)
Click to expand...

Ummm... you could maybe get an acceptable 2x3 inch image out of that in print. I think Pat would need more than glasses if he hangs that on his wall. :wink:

Part of the reason we struggled with illegal copying back when we were part of the working world - someone would copy a wallet size photo, enlarge it to 8x10, and it would look like crap with our name on it.
 
I've had the map for years (2 any way). We'll probably join the organization - at the suggestion of B&E, although we'll probably not do the entire thing as there is a lot of wasted space there. But it seems to be a great group.

I've been on the net with a fellow down in Corpus Christi, TX (neighbor) he just finished the loop in a 48' trawler. He's selling the 48' and planning on a C-Dory (maybe 1 more in Texas Jim) says the trawler was to big, to expensive, to slow and to something else (??) - then he may do it again.
 
Bill - think I will spring for the $18 for the big map so I can actually read the print on it!

Jim - just got nice expensive new progressive tri-focals, wearing them full time - actually CAN see better, not well enough to read the printing on a 400 x574 pixel print out, as you surmised!

Dave W - I am probably going to join AGLCA, buy the map, and buy the first Skipper Bob planning book. After that, we'll see.

As you can tell, I am starting to obsess on this Great Loop thing! And that's a good thing, if you don't have something really neat you are planning, you are just using oxygen! We are enjoying our "little" cruises, from overnighters at Andrews Bay to the CBGTs to the major vacation at Powell in September, but the prospect of a year or more on the Great Loop (have to add in the side trip to the Bahamas, no?) is just qualitatively different and exciting!
 
As I mentioned above, we did the trip in a 6 knt sailboat. I always thought that there's got to be something better (read faster) until I met a cruiser with a faster boat, say 15 knts. It's then that I realized that our slow cruising speed captured a lot of additional romance/flavor on the voyage.

The fast boat captain said: " I've got to get going this morning, got to make Chicago tomorrow," and here we'd only entered Lake Huron. Well with our slow speed, we stopped at every one of Michigan's Harbours of Refuge, which are small places to moor about every 40-50 miles around the Michigan mitten. Ya, sure, everyone's heard of Mackinaw City, but how about Grand Haven, with their light and water show? Wonderful. And spending the night in Georgia's swamps next to the ICW. The lightning show was spectacular and mercifully short. And two weeks through the Eire Canal, including the carousel museum in East Tonawanda? Fastest carousel in the world. And a summer in the Chesapeake Bay. OK, so maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to do, but Annapolis was a great spot to tour the Capital, AND Oxford.

So what I'm saying, don't try to do the trip in one season, you really need two. Let the delivery skippers do their 25 knts, but try to keep a sense of what you're traveling through. Spend a couple of days every know and then traveling through the hinterlands.

Boris
 
Yep - once you get to THAT point take your time. We've been RV'ers for 30+ years and have done about all the areas we want by road, but didn't really want to "park it", so now we'll do the "blue roads". I figure that if we did the "Loop" we'd take 5 years - and at 66 that's to man, since I'd really like to do the Inside, and the Keys/Bahama (how about Cuba??) and a few others. Nova Scotia has a tourist guide titled Dreamers & Doers - love that title !
 
I have done about half of the loop--maybe a bit more. I have been active on the Great loop list server since its inception:
http://www.trawlersandtrawlering.com/gr ... plist.html

Our own Tom Cat owner Georgs Kolesnikovs is the originator and owner of this list server, and this list is a free and excellent resource.

You should buy Skipper Bob's guides (now owned by Waterway Guides). You also want Quimby's guide, Waterway Guides for the various sections and one of the great Lake's guides.

I personally don't think that the "Great Loop Association" is a necessity, unless you want to attent one of their gatherings.

There are also several books on the Great loop--and many web sites describing what to do. I feel that most people do the loop way too fast, and don't enjoy the towns and people along the way. There can also be a "sheep" mentality of the cruisers.
 
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