Browsing: Great Loop

Boat Reviews
By

Beneteau Launches New Swift Trawler 35, an Upgrade of a Cruising Favorite

Beneteau is updating its popular Swift Trawler 34 this fall with a new Swift Trawler 35 after an eight-year run. The new 35 has all the features of the 34, plus upgrades inside and out, the most obvious being new twin transom doors that open out to create a massive open space from the swim platform through the cockpit into the salon. I have a very warm spot in my heart for the Beneteau Swift Trawler 34. Five years ago, I spent more than a week on one with George Sass Sr., the photographer, as we cruised 700 miles of…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
By

On Watch

After The Loop and 25,000 miles, The Coles and My Dream Are “Not Done Yet” Ted and Sue Cole of Placerville, California, just crossed their wake in Dania Beach, Florida, completing the Great Loop around the eastern half of the United States. That, of course, is a major achievement, but it’s not singular. After all, 127 other boats completed the Loop last year alone. But what is unusual, is that the Coles only cruised part of the time, taking seven years on the Loop from start to finish. And even then they managed to put in side trips to Mexico,…

Cruising Life
By

4,465 Milles of the Great Loop Alone on a 14-foot Walker Bay

You’ve got to love Dave Pike (at least I do). On his blog, where he explains why he’s doing the Great Loop in a 14-foot Walker Bay RIB, he introduces himself by saying, “I’m a 67-year-old male with a bit of adventure in my DNA.” He’s climbed mountains, paddled canoes through the Canadian wilderness, and started cruising when he and his wife Ann chartered a trawler in Alaska 15 years ago. And now he’s just gone through the Erie Canal on his Walker Bay, putting 4,465 Great Loop miles behind him, as he starts the last leg of his solo…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
By

On Watch

Cruising the Loop, A Canadian Couple Live Their Dream When Mike and Maria Fenn left Krates Marina in Keswick, Ontario (just above Toronto), early last July to start the Great Loop, a friend gave them a small toy monkey to put on their boat; in fact, he gave a monkey to everyone starting a long cruise. “The purpose is to get the monkey off your back and instead put the monkey on the dash of your vessel,” Fenn said. The Fenns probably didn’t need a good luck monkey; they’d been cruising out of Krates for 21 years. And last summer,…

Cruising Life
By

Retired Couple, and Their Dog, Tackle the Great Loop in a C-Dory 25

Pat and Patty Anderson, of Birch Bay, Washington, just north of Bellingham, love to go boating. They bought their C-Dory 25 Daydream at the Seattle boat show in 2005, and have spent much of their free time cruising the nearby San Juan and Canadian Gulf Islands. The boat is powered by a single Honda 150-hp outboard, with a backup 15-hp Honda as a kicker. The longest time they have spent on board was about two weeks. But Pat, a retired lawyer, wanted to expand their horizons, so the Andersons decided to tackle the Great Loop. With their dog Baxter, the…

Boat Reviews
By

New Fitzgerald Marine F-28: A Land Rover for the Great Loop, and Beyond

Here’s a preview of the new custom F-28, designed and built by Mark Fitzgerald of Thomaston, Maine, that’s now being finished with a teak deck and Awlgrip at French & Webb in Belfast, Maine. It will be ready for launching in mid-May. Fitzgerald, of Fitzgerald Marine Architecture, Inc., designed the F-28 for an experienced client who wants to do the Great Loop. Originally, the client wanted a boat similar to a center console, since he expected to spend nights in hotels along the way. When he learned that there are stretches of the Loop, particularly along the Mississippi, where it’s…

Cruising Life
By

Mia Wilson, Age 6 with a Congenital Heart Defect, Is on the Great Loop with Her Family

When she was born with a congenital heart defect, Mia Wilson was given a 10 percent chance to live. Now, after three open-heart surgeries, Mia, 6, is on the Great Loop with her family and loving every day of it. Mia and her family, father Bobby, mother Wendy and big sisters Nina, 19, AnnaMay, 9, and Ella, 7, are cruising the 6,000-mile Great Loop on a Bayliner 32 named La Cigale, despite Mia’s need for 40 different medicines a day; she’s also hooked up to a feeding machine most of the time since she can’t swallow. The Wilsons tie…

Cruising Life
By

Lucas Pronk, Age 10, Tells His 5th Grade Class Back Home About the Great Loop; Great Video

If you want to renew your faith in humanity, or just feel good about the world, take a look at this video by Lucas Pronk, 10. Yes, I know he’s on a sailboat, and this is a powerboat site. But that’s not the point. Lucas and his family – his father, James; mother, Nancy; and brother Marcos, 6, are truly living the dream – doing the Great Loop together – on a 44-year-old Catalina 27. James, an artist, and Nancy, a teacher, are taking a year off, and homeschooling the boys. They rented their house in Peterborough, Ontario, and set…

Cruising Life
By

Canadian Couple Completes Great Loop, Tells All in New Book

You can’t say that Carole Duval and Michel Mailloux aren’t adventuresome. Indeed, the couple from Brossard, Quebec, near Montreal, recently completed more than 6,100 nm on the Great Loop and the Bahamas on their 1990 Carver 41, named Emotion III. During those 13 months, they ran through just about every kind of experience – and emotion – you’d expect on such a long cruise, including getting stuck for three days on a dredged inlet in the Suwannee River near the Gulf of Mexico (see picture above). When they got home, Duval wrote a book about their trip, appropriately called “The…

Cruising Life
By

Catch Up with the Parkers, If You Can

You’d be hard put to find more couples with more cruising miles under their belts on the same boat than Jeff and Suzie Parker, from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Ten years ago they bought their Kadey-Krogen 48, Idyll Time, and they – with their two dogs and two Amazon parrots – have been going strong ever since. The Parkers have already completed the Great Loop and now they’re cruising a bit closer to home. In their latest blog, covering a short cruise from Manteo to Ocracoke near the Outer Banks in North Carolina, Jeff learns that even the most experienced cruiser can…

1 … 5 6 7 8