Doin the Great Loop!

After many nights trying to decide where my next cruise is gonna take place..I have decided " Amigo" and I are doin the Great American Loop. I have friends all along the way and keep putting off visiting them due to me never wanting to leave the boat...I LOVE my boat! So...instead of driving the long distance and sitting in miserable traffic in big cities...I will just take my time and go the water route and see all the cities, beautiful scenery, meet new people, visit old friends and stay on my boat! Win win!

I draw 5' with a 10' beam and my atomic 4 pushes me at hull speed at the rate of about 1 gallon per hour. Most big trawlers that do the loop are 5'+ draft 12' to 20' beam and use 5 to? gph!

I will however.... have build a couple crutches for demasting ( I am deck stepped) for the many low fixed bridges I will encounter along the way. No problem as I could use the spars for a full boat cover anyways from the elements!

I leave out next winter from Ft Myers Beach Fl where I am living now. I will go by route around the Keys as I wanna do some more diving there. Taking my time I can make Canada by Summer as I will take a couple years off again to take the trip. I already have saved the complete route fuel expenses, 3 years of provisioning expenses, docking (if I have to) expenses and parts for engine..plumbing etc. I am doing a lot of planning and updating charts as well as my chart plotter upgrades. Gonna be exciting!

I am not asking for anyones opinion as I don't give a crap about your negativity anyways...lol! Everytime I tell someone I am gonna do something it's always.."oh..that won't work"...or "you can't do that"...Ha! I always laugh at them and do it anyways! Columbus would have never came this land if he listened to the nay sayers!

Anyways...just letting y'all know I am still living my dreams and my next is the Great American Loop!

Sounds like Fun

Quite a coincidence...
This month's YC meeting program was by a couple that took their trawler on this "great loop" cruise. I will try to find their names... they wrote a book. I recall that their boat is based out of Olympia, WA, and that they trucked it across the continent.

There seems to bit quite a bit of info on the web. More than I might have imagined.
http://www.gocoastalcruising.com/CC_ArticleList.asp?ndx1=4&ndx2=1&ndx3=0&rcd=0

http://homepage.mac.com/twojscom/GreatLoop/

http://www.greatloop.org/

Don't talk to me about naysayers Jeff. Amazing what kind of coments we get about living aboard.

Go have your adventure and have a great time. In a couple of years we will cast off the lines and see the world.

Hi Capt Jeff,

Do you know how low the lowest bridges are? You could tabernacle your rig. There are a least two E35 Mk2's in the upper harbor in Santa Cruz. They go out pretty regularly and have to drop the mast twice each time.

Sounds like a great trip!