Captain's Choice completes the Great loop

On August 3, after 7992 miles, we crossed our wake in Buffalo NY, completing America's Great Loop cruise. It has been a dream of ours for years and we consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have been able to make that dream a reality. For anyone who is thinking about doing the loop, I urge you to take on one of the last great boating adventures, cast off your lines and head off into the unknown. You will be rewarded with a journey like no other, will meet untold numbers of like minded cruisers, and will make friendships and memories to last a lifetime.
A tip of the cap to fellow CSR members we met along the way: The gang from Lake Michigan who allowed us to crash your rendevous last August in South Haven, Jeff and Wendy then again contacted us when in Ft Myers, thank you for taking time from your vacation to catch up with us. Sistership owners Kurt from Chicago and Bill from Beaufort, your kindness and local knowledge were much appreciated. AJ and Amy from Gimme Time, it was fun having docktails along the Trent Severn in Canada when we both were looping. To the many others that recognized the CSR burgee flying from our light staff and would say hello or shout out on the radio, it was nice to know we had friends in places we had never been.

Congratulations, Glad you had a great trip and made it home safe. I think that trip is on a lot of boaters bucket list.

That is just pure awesome! Hope to cross that one off in my lifetime! Congrats

Congratulations on crossing your wake. The loop is on our bucket list.

Congrats mark & Karen! I've been having "loop dreams" for many years now. Owning my current boat (360DA) is my next step towards the Great Loop. When my wife and I were beginning to window-shop for it, we called it our "interim" boat, so that we could lean how to handle a larger boat and learn about visiting new and unfamiliar marinas to prepare for the loop. We have just begun to explore the Chesapeake Bay.

It was members here (The Van Halls; Sum Escape (44DA)) that we noticed in Portsmouth VA flying a AGLCA burgee on their 42 Grand banks and struck up a conversation. After talking for about 45 minutes we headed home and as my wife was getting into the car she said "OK, I'm in." That's when we got serious about finding the "interim boat"!

Congrats on making the dream come true.

What a trip, what memories.

Would love to hear more about the journey.

Mark

Awesome....... It's on my bucket list for sure... You'll have to give us some numbers when you get everything sorted out.

Awesome!!!!
Congrats on making the loop, it's a hope of mine to be able to do it at some point as well.

Congrats!!!! Where is the link to all the pictures and blog?

Congratulations on completing a journey that many just dream about.

I too look forward to seeing photos and your narrative about the trip.

someday !!

It is so good to see the completion of such a long journey. It was about a year ago we were meeting in South Haven. Congratulations!!!

MM

Nice to see a local do this! Making plans to do the same 9 years from now. And 8k miles! Bunch of side trips?

Pyrojodge said:

Awesome....... It's on my bucket list for sure... You'll have to give us some numbers when you get everything sorted out.

Click to expand...

chuck1 said:

Congrats!!!! Where is the link to all the pictures and blog?

Click to expand...

Gofirstclass said:

Congratulations on completing a journey that many just dream about.

I too look forward to seeing photos and your narrative about the trip.

Click to expand...

bracketracer said:

Nice to see a local do this! Making plans to do the same 9 years from now. And 8k miles! Bunch of side trips?

Click to expand...

Thanks guys! I will put some numbers up when I get a chance.
The link to The Admiral's blog and all the pics is below.
Yes a few side trips, the big one was doing Canada in 2015 and returning home through Huron and Erie, then heading out again after full retirement. Also spent a month in the keys, didn't cut it short by going through Okeechobee.
www.ourcaptainschoice.blogspot.com

Mark, What a great accomplishment for your family. I salute you. Great job! JC

Congrats Mark! - Looking forward to reading the admirals blog!

For those that wanted to see the numbers on the loop, here's the tally.
Period of travel: 6-14-15 through 8-23-15 (Canada mostly, western shore of Lake Huron, Lake Erie)
7-24-16 through 8-3-17 (Back to Michigan to pick up where we left off and then complete the trip.
Loop-in-progress time: 25.5 months
Total days actually looping: 447
Total miles traveled: 7992
Travel days: 201
Average distance traveled on travel days: 39.8 miles
longest distance traveled at one time: 172 miles, Gulf crossing (Dog Island to Tarpon Springs)
Average speed for entire loop: (total miles / total hours put on engines) 8.58 mph
Typical travel speed: 9.5 +/- mph
Locks transited: 141
Bridges: (swung, lifted or otherwise moved for us to pass) 110
hours put on the engines: 931
hours put on the generator: 204
Nights spent at a marina: 278
at anchor: 96
at a free wall or dock: 62
on a mooring ball: 11
Dinged props: 0
Groundings: 0
Haul outs: 0

Most of the Dollars and cents:
Grocery costs were slightly less than when we are not looping.
Dining out (all meals, apps, wineries and craft breweries etc) were slightly more than not looping. We tried to keep this in line with our normal lifestyle
but were sure to get out enough to experience local fare and well rated local restaurants.

Boat expenses: all routine. Oil, filters, fuel additives, anodes, cleaning supplies etc. Also $375 for Loop rider onto insurance.
We had 3 non-routine maintenance items, all age related: radio handset cord started cracking and disintegrated $95,
strata glass panel cracked when I rolled it up on a cool morning $200 to have a new panel sewn in.
Walker air sep housing hairline crack that started dripping oil $475
Labor spent on boat: divers to clean bottom, 3 times at $2.50/ft plus one $15 charge to change diver plate I provided.
We were very fortunate that all the systems on the boat never skipped a beat and she ran perfect mechanically.

Fuel: 5686 gallons @ average cost of $2.83/gal= $16075.
I estimate based on previous years that I would have spent $8000 in fuel for the boat in the 6 summer months that I would have used the boat here
had we not looped, maybe more because we are retired now, and her explorer and my f-350 sat for 64 weeks, with that factored in, (that's not reaching, is it?)
fuel cost difference: $4038 more to loop.

Dockage: This is the big one. 278 nights in a marina plus 11 nights on a paid mooring ball that I can only subtract 1 winter's indoor storage from.
We had to pay for our slip here at home because we were here for a part of the 3 summers involved, and there are no empty 44' slips at the marina
and we would have lost our slip to someone else. Total cost for docking: $14317 - $2000 winter storage = $12317.

Misc. costs: $2844. This is stuff like charts, gifts, air fare to fly home for Christmas, Uber, renting cars to visit nearby places of interest,
upgrades to cell phone service, FL registration etc. all loop related.

Additional costs at home like lawn care, snow plowing, and upgrading security system were more than offset by cancelling cable, minimums on utility bills,
removing insurance from our vehicles, etc. Family members took care of our mail forwarding.

We spent quite a bit on entertainment like city tours, theater, baseball games, concerts, museums etc but that's half the reason we went.

Totaled up it was about a $22300 trip.
Spending almost 450 days doing what we have talked about for years, seeing things and hearing about peoples stories, chasing 80 degrees and sunshine around the
eastern half of the country in a 2 bedroom 2 bath condo on the water and spending more than a year in shorts and bathing suits: priceless.

Thank you SO much for taking the time to post up all this information. Please complement your wife on her blogging effort is was so enjoyable, I'm still reading. Your information shared really puts a great perspective on this adventure. I think I would like mostly all of it, well except for the Mississippi River section LOL...

Hope you continue to enjoy cruising and the boat stays running well.

Sounds so amazing! I cannot wait to do this one day!

Josh

Stellar wrap up! Thank you so much for this!