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Phil and Karen Barbalace had different ideas about boating.

For Phil, who first hit the water in the 1980s, the experience was often about pushing limits. “I’m kind of a rough-and-tumble person,” he says. “When I go sailing, I really go sailing. We bury the bow and stuff like that.”

For Karen, who grew up sailing around Annapolis, Maryland, on her father’s Aquarius 21, boating was more about relaxing. “I liked to go along and experience being on the water,” she says.

They married in 1986 and bought a Hunter 34, which they cruised around the Chesapeake Bay. They sometimes ventured a bit farther—say, up to New Jersey—but mostly, they stuck closer to home. Then, around 2006, Phil got into ocean sailing. He crewed on boats from the Chesapeake to the Virgin Islands and Bermuda, and was so enthused that he wanted to try similar runs with Karen.

There was just one problem: Karen had zero interest in more adventurous cruising.

Enter the idea of the Great Loop, which Phil learned existed from a magazine around 2010. The Great Loop is a series of connecting waterways that encircles half the United States. Cruisers can navigate from the East Coast’s Intracoastal Waterway north to the Erie Canal and across the Great Lakes, then down the Mississippi River and across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida, and then back to the East Coast.

Generally speaking, the loop is 5,250 to 6,000 miles, depending on the routes mariners choose. The starting point can be anywhere, the loop can be made in either direction, and there are options for offshoots into Canada and more. People have completed the Great Loop in everything from kayaks to 70-foot yachts—anything that can fit beneath the route’s lowest bridge, which has a clearance just shy of 20 feet on the Illinois River.

When Phil learned about the Great Loop, he and Karen had a 20-foot Sea Ray that they used for wakeboarding with their teenage sons. One of the boys went off to college in Florida, and Phil saw an opportunity.

Their son trailered the Sea Ray to Florida, and Phil and Karen cruised the boat up the East Coast, back to Virginia. “We got on this boat with duffel bags, a cooler and folding bicycles,” Karen says. “It had an open cockpit, you couldn’t sleep on it, but we brought it all the way from Miami to Norfolk.”

Along the route, which ended up being 1,095 miles, they stayed in bed-and-breakfasts. The boat did 26 knots, so they’d cruise for two or three hours, then hang out at a hotel pool before going out to dinner. With a weeklong break for bad weather in North Carolina, the trip took about a month.

“We had done a lot of little bits and pieces of the ICW, just little day trips,” Karen says, “but this was my first time really seeing this beautiful waterway, and I loved it. It was a lot of fun.”

And so, the Great Loop became part of their plans. They bought a Mainship 40 for its flybridge and the master stateroom’s walk-around berth, spent a year upgrading the electronics and getting comfortable aboard, and completed the loop in 91 days of cruising spread out over two years.

“We had perfect weather 89 days,” Phil says. “We had rain two days. It was unbelievable.”

And it was a totally different approach to the Great Loop than the one Steve and Mary Ellen Woiler took—showing just how varied the loop can be for different kinds of cruisers.

The Woilers live in Syracuse, New York, and have been sailing and racing on Lake Ontario for 40 years, mostly with their Niagara 31. In 2005, they bought a Tartan 34C with the idea of cruising down South. “You know how things get in the winter in the Northeast,” Mary Ellen says. “We wanted to be two-boat owners.”

It took them seven years to rebuild the Tartan, which they christened Seven Sundays. They spent about $80,000, and Steve did the work himself. In 2012, they launched, and in 2013, they started making their way south down the Hudson River to New York City. They’d cruise for a few months, leave the boat, catch an Uber back to their car, drive home for a spell, and then repeat.

“At that point, we weren’t doing the Great Loop,” Steve says. “We were just puttering. It didn’t matter how long it took us to get wherever we went; we wanted to check out every town and smell every one of the roses. We didn’t even know the loop existed. Our only plan was to putter down the East Coast, find a place to put the boat in Florida, and maybe go to the Bahamas.”

Somewhere around Fort Myers, Florida, they saw an ad for the Great Loop. They figured they were already halfway done, so they might as well go for it.

They joined America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association and started chatting with other loopers. They realized they’d probably passed tons of them without knowing what the burgees meant. (White means loop in progress, gold means loop completed, and platinum means loop completed more than once.) And Mary Ellen decided that if they were going to complete the loop in comfort, they’d need a bigger boat.

The Cabo Rico Northeast 400 suited their needs, both for finishing the loop and for later use as a winter getaway based in Florida. “This motorsailer has inside steering, outside steering, air conditioning, heat—it’s a cottage on the water that sails,” Steve says.

They bought it in early 2020, christened it Remedy and headed for the Great Lakes.

“We actually did the loop in two different boats,” Mary Ellen says. “We did the eastern part in the Tartan and the western part in the Cabo Rico.”

They learned that having to take a mast up and down along the route was doable but not easy. “The few sailors that do the Great Loop, they ship their masts from Chicago to Florida,” Steve says. “I took ours with us, and I built the structure that would hold it.”

Nine years later, they crossed their wake and completed the loop. Steve worked along the way at his careers in photography and insurance, and Mary Ellen took time off from her job as a nurse practitioner.

“We were on the boat for four to five months a year, every year,” Steve says.

Today, they’re retired and enjoying time with their grandchildren—as well as moving into powerboating.

Their new ride is a Grand Banks Eastbay 40, also named Remedy. They plan to use it for “mini loops” in places they missed on the Great Loop, including the Trent-Severn Waterway in Ontario and the Canadian part of the Great Lakes.

“You can do it any way you want,” Mary Ellen says. “It’s a wonderful way to see the world.”

The Bridge That Matters Most

It’s located on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which is sometimes called the Chicago Drainage Canal. This bridge is the one that, more than any other, determines the maximum air draft of a boat doing the Great Loop (and thus, which boats can actually be used to complete the loop). The bridge has a clearance height just shy of 20 feet. It’s a fixed bridge, and there’s no other route boaters can take to complete the loop.

As You Like It

There really is no right or wrong way to complete the Great Loop. Some people save up time and money, and then do the whole shebang in less than a year, following the seasons in one direction or the other. Some people spend years or more than a decade going back and forth to their boats from home or working along the way. All that matters in the end is being able to say that you crossed your own wake somewhere on the route.

Tips From Experienced Loopers

The big piece of advice that both couples interviewed for this article offered is that you should do the loop in the boat and time frame that best suit your needs. Those needs, they learned, can change along the way. The boat you start out in might not be the one you finish in. The route you think you’ll take can switch because of weather, reasons back home, closures for construction or—heaven forbid it happens again—a pandemic. Their best advice is to go with the flow, whatever your flow happens to be.

The post Navigating the Great Loop appeared first on Yachting.

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It’s been almost two decades since the phrase “quality time remaining” became our mantra. To us, QTR doesn’t mean we will live to be 100 years old; rather it reminds us how much time we have left to do the things we love to do. It’s our reminder to live each day as though it’s our last.

My husband, Bob, and I met through boating many years ago in San Diego. He was a former naval aviator, a longtime boater and a commercial airline captain at the time. I was working in the marine industry selling advertising into national boating publications, and sailing and racing as crew on other people’s boats.

One of the first things we did after we got married was join the San Diego Yacht Club and partner with friends in the ownership of Sunshine, a 1985 Brewer 42-foot pilothouse cutter. We loved that boat. Swinging on the hook was our favorite thing, and being on board was our happy place.

We sailed Sunshine along the Southern California coastline to Catalina Island, the Channel Islands and parts of Mexico, and did a lot of bareboat chartering. We chartered in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Tahiti, Greece, Croatia and Sardinia, and we made three trips to the Pacific Northwest. Friends always joined us on these trips—which made the charter surprisingly inexpensive—and we all enjoyed our amazing adventures. Discovering a new place by boat has always been our favorite vacation.

Our first bareboat charter in the Pacific Northwest was in 2005 on a Grand Banks 36, where we joined the annual Mother Goose Cruise to Alaska, led by NW Explorations in Bellingham, Washington. Because we were both still working and had limited time, we went only as far north as Desolation Sound, the largest marine park in British Columbia. That was enough for us to fall in love with the area and to whet our appetite for what was to come. They say that you can cruise the waters of the Pacific Northwest your whole life and never see it all, and we believe it. The seed was planted, and we knew we wanted more.

We did two more bareboat charters in the region—one on a sailboat in 2013 and another on a Grand Banks 42 in 2016. By 2016, we were both retired, and it was on that cruise that we made the decision to sell our partnership in Sunshine and buy a powerboat for cruising. Although we are sailors at heart, we both agreed that a Grand Banks would be the perfect boat for us. Not only is it a lot less work than sailing for folks our age; it’s also more practical in the Pacific Northwest, where the wind is sporadic, at best. You can stay comfortable, warm and dry, all the while taking in the amazing views.

In December 2016, we fulfilled our dream and bought a 1990 Grand Banks 46 Classic in Seattle. We named it Grand QTR, and it has indeed been that. We have been having the time of our lives.

We found a slip in Sidney, British Columbia, a charming little town that has everything we need just 17 miles north of Victoria on Vancouver Island. From San Diego, we can take an early-morning flight up through Seattle, into Victoria, and be on board Grand QTR by lunchtime. It’s the ideal location, with easy access to both the Canadian Gulf Islands and the U.S. San Juan Islands. Beautiful views of Mount Baker are visible from Sidney. There are so many great harbors from which to choose, and all are so close by. Bob loves the challenge of navigating the waters and continually checking the tides, currents and weather, while I am always on “log watch” (and whale watch) when underway.

Our first two seasons on board were spent exploring our new backyard, with friends and family joining throughout the summer. By then we had two grandsons (we now have three), and we’ve found that there’s nothing more fun than sharing this incredible experience with family. We all love Grand QTR. Handrails and walk-around room outside the entire boat keep it safe for grandkids and grandparents alike, while the spacious main salon provides 360-degree views and plenty of room for entertaining.

During our first season, the highlight was a trip to Chatterbox Falls, where we cruised 50 miles up the gorgeous fjords of Jervis Inlet, through the Malibu Rapids at slack tide, and into Princess Louisa Inlet—a trip that had been on our bucket list. It is one of the most amazing places on Earth. There’s no cellphone service or Wi-Fi, only the pristine beauty of Mother Nature at her finest. It’s one of many places in these waters that can be accessed only by boat or seaplane. For us, just being there was a spiritual experience.

The highlight of our Pacific Northwest cruising seasons was our summer cruising in 2019, when we buddy-boated up the Inside Passage to Glacier Bay, Alaska, with our Sidney slip mates. They were on their 2014 Kadey-Krogen 44, Mana Kai. Traveling with them made for a safe and fantastic journey. It was the trip of a lifetime for us, traveling 3,200 nautical miles over five months. The cruising grounds are pristine, breathtaking and nothing short of spectacular. The farther north you go, the more beautiful it is and the more wildlife you encounter. Seeing orcas, humpbacks, porpoises, otters, eagles, ravens, herons and bears is always a thrill. The Misty Fjords, like Glacier Bay National Park, was another spiritual place we will never forget.

When COVID-19 prevented us from getting into Canada in 2020 and 2021, we had NW Explorations deliver our boat to Bellingham and spent both of those summers cruising Washington state. We rendezvoused with Mana Kai and Water Dog, another Kadey-Krogen couple (and their two dogs) we met during our 2019 cruise to Alaska. Cruising with them, we had two fantastic, COVID-safe, Dungeness-crab-filled summers. Stunning views of Mount Rainier are a highlight of cruising in south Puget Sound, and visiting with friends and family who live there makes it even better. The diversity of the island hiking, along with a few online yoga classes, helped keep us in shape while cruising. We’re looking forward to getting back to British Columbia. There’s lots more to explore.

As long as it’s still fun, and as long as we’re in good health, we hope to continue living this dream. Not only is Grand QTR our happy place, but it’s also become our safe place. And with no TV on board, it’s a real escape for us. Floating someplace beautiful with people you love—that is QTR.

Finding Community

We attended the annual Grand Banks Rendezvous in Roche Harbor, San Juan Island, Washington, in 2018 to kick off our second cruising season. We enjoyed the seminars, met like-minded cruisers, and reconnected with old friends from the boating industry, which made it feel like home. From there, we slowly cruised up the east coast toward Vancouver Island and into the majestic Broughton archipelago. Most of the marinas in the Broughtons have happy hours where cruisers bring food to share with fellow cruisers. It’s fun, and you meet a lot of interesting people that you see again down the road. It really adds to the QTR, as does the delicious seafood that’s plentiful at the get-togethers. Our cruising season is usually May through September, so for us, it is a four-to-five-month vacation every year.

Take the next step: grandqtr.com

The post From Sailboat to Powerboat: The Dream Fulfilled appeared first on Yachting.

For boaters who prefer to cruise in US waters, a Great Loop itinerary is ideal. After a first leg northward along the East Coast, the route turns inward toward the Great Lakes and American heartland.

“For people who are used to international cruising and looking for a US option right now, this is it,” says Kim Russo, executive director of the America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association.

Cruisers continuing along a Great Loop itinerary from the Erie Canal will go through Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, in that order. These lakes are called great for a reason and require skippers with some boating experience. Lake Erie alone is home to more than 1,000 shipwrecks. Lake Huron, with 30,000 islands, has the most shoreline among all the Great Lakes, while Lake Michigan is so big that it touches four states: Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. When weather descends on bodies of water this big, yachtsmen need to know how to stay safe.

And, of course, during the good cruising days, some of America’s best-known cities are here to be explored. Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee and Chicago can all be part of a Great Loop itinerary, along with visits to some of their top attractions: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Henry Ford Museum, the Harley-Davidson Museum and Wrigley Field. (Go, Cubs, go!)

From Chicago, Loopers have a choice of how they want to cruise south to the Gulf of Mexico. The Illinois River is one option. Another is to join the mighty Mississippi farther to the north (the part that Mark Twain liked the best). And cruisers can take the

Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway all the way to Alabama. The ultimate destination on this leg is the Gulf of Mexico, putting the boat in position for a final leg back to Florida or the East Coast.

Making the choices is part of the Great Loop fun. As Russo says, “People have really discovered there’s as many different ways to do this as there are types of boats.”

The Great Lakes

If the first leg of a Great Loop cruise includes the Erie Canal, then Lake Erie is the first of the Great Lakes on the second leg. The Lake Erie Islands are an area the locals call “Vacationland.” Put-In Bay on Lake Erie’s South Bass Island has beach attractions, wineries and pubs, hiking trails and more. Lake Huron will be next, with one possible stop being Mackinac Island. If you go ashore, you must go by foot, bicycle or horse-drawn carriage. Lake Michigan awaits after that, with a western shoreline that has cities to explore. The two biggest are Milwaukee and Chicago, with museums, sports teams and five-star restaurants.

Chicago

Boaters looking to head ashore for an authentic meal and cultural experience have many choices in Chicago. Paseo Boricua is a Puerto Rican enclave where restaurants serve pasteles (pork tamales) and arroz con gandules (rice, pigeon peas and pork). Greektown, as the name suggests, is the neighborhood to visit for dolmades (rice and ground beef in grape leaves), moussaka (kind of like eggplant and beef lasagna) and spanakopita (spinach and feta in phyllo dough). Little Italy serves up all kinds of pasta, bruschetta and gnocchi, while Chinatown is all about spicy rabbit, made-to-order dumplings and dim sum (served, of course, with tea).

The post Great Loop Cruise Part II: America’s Heartland appeared first on Yachting.

For owners with boats up to about 70 feet length overall, few itineraries excite the mind like the Great Loop—an exploration of America by boat. And, given that a Loop cruise requires planning, now is a terrific time to think about a Great Loop cruise for when the COVID-19 pandemic eases.

“Most people take at least a few months to plan, and that’s on the low end,” says Kim Russo, executive director of America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association. “Quite a few people join us a few years before they want to do the Great Loop so they can learn from everybody else.”

Generally speaking, the Loop runs along the East Coast, across to the Great Lakes, south to the Gulf of Mexico, and through Florida back to the East Coast. There is no official starting point; we’re beginning in the Northeast in this first of Yachting’s three-part Great Loop series because it’s summertime, and that’s the perfect season for Northeast boating.

From New York City up to about Albany, New York, boaters follow the Hudson River. This river flanks Manhattan, offering views of the skyline as well as the Statue of Liberty—about as all-American as it gets. As the Hudson continues up beyond the city, it becomes an artery through some of the most scenic treescapes in the nation. And just beyond Troy, New York, Loopers make a choice. To the west is the Erie Canal, which served as a key route of commerce between the East and the Great Lakes for generations. Staying north leads to Lake Champlain and Montreal.

There is no right or wrong way to eventually reach the Great Lakes; most Loopers pick a route based on their boat’s air draft. “If you can clear 17 feet, then you have options,” Russo says. “You see different things on the routes, so that’s one of the big choices you want to research.”

In fact, she says, some people buy a vessel specifically to allow for all Loop options: “A lot of the boat shows have gone virtual, so now’s a great time to be shopping for a Great Loop boat.”

New York

Visiting New York City by boat offers metropolitan views of iconic buildings and landmarks.

• The Statue of Liberty is on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, close to Ellis Island, which welcomed about 12 million immigrants to US shores.
• The Hudson River offers scenery filled with trees so beautiful, they inspired the creation of the Hudson River School of artists such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church.
• Kingston, which served as the state’s capital in the 1700s, has three districts on the National Register of Historic Places.
• Troy is 150 miles north of New York Harbor and where most Loopers will encounter their first lock.

Montreal

Since at least the 1600s, mariners have arrived at what we now call the Old Port of Montreal. In the 1990s, it was redeveloped into a recreational and historical site that includes La Grande Roue de Montreal, shown in the photograph at left.

• Notre-Dame Basilica is the city’s oldest church, dating back to 1656. The stained-glass artwork tells the story of the city’s history.
• Montreal Museum of Fine Arts not only has the types of exhibitions and collections you’d expect to find at a museum, but it also hosts musical concerts at Bourgie Hall.
• Montreal Botanical Garden spans about 190 acres with Alpine, Japanese, Chinese and other gardens.

The post The Great Loop: Part I appeared first on Yachting.