Have you heard of the Great Loop?

19 comments

1. Our marina is one of the main stops on the Illinois for larger boats due to our water depth. For us Looper season should be starting here in the next few weeks. We see people from all over the country and from all over the world. It’s a really cool and not a widely known thing but it seems to be growing in popularity.

   Last year we had crews from Germany, Belgium, Australia, and South Africa stop. Not to mention people from almost every state in the union. Pretty wild considering we are in the middle of nowhere Illinois.

2. Yes, my grandfather did it multiple times up into has late 70s.

3. No, but now I can’t think of anything else. Maybe I’ll start with the MR340 and just keep going.

4. The Great American Loop is an exciting and desirable adventure that many have expressed interest in and hopes of one day completing a voyage along this route. With a total length of approximately 6,000 miles, this system of waterways offers a unique and exciting journey for ships traveling through the inland waterways of the eastern United States.

5. Yep, seems pretty neat! I’ve done a small chunk of it, the Florida portion of the Intracoastal Waterway, and had an excellent time.

   The most famous long-distance boating adventure in my neck of the woods is the Inside Passage, which stretches from Puget Sound, through BC and up into Southeast Alaska. It’s a wonderful experience, some of the most beautiful terrain on the planet. I had the fortune to get to do it several times back when I worked in Alaska.

6. Man it’s crazy how much water, and navigable water at that, is out east.

   Haven’t heard of this. Sounds cool though!

7. Wow. I’d never heard of this. It sounds awesome.

8. Not a boat guy, so I never heard of it. Looks cool, though.

   What’s the waterway that connects Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay in Canada?

9. I’ve heard of it but never looked into it.

   Wikipedia has a picture of it and I’m a little curious about the route. How exactly do ships get through Niagara Falls?

10. Fun fact Omaha is the furthest port navigable to the Gulf of Mexico for barge traffic.

11. No i haven’t. but damn i guess the eastern USA is a giant island technically right?

12. I have, I’d like to do it some day. Seems super relaxing to just cruise like that.

13. Never heard of it, and from the looks of this map only a few parts of it would be great…

14. I grew up on the ICW, we got that in our local history lessons. These waterways are the secret sauce that fueled the economic engine of the US, historically and still today to a significant extent.

    I had a college professor who said “the world knows communism doesn’t work and capitalism does, because of the USA and the USSR. But if the proving grounds had been swapped, the world might have taken a different lesson.

15. I’ve heard about it, but for the first time a couple of weeks ago

16. My in-laws are boaters (in Toledo). They have a few friends who have completed the Great Loop. Their advice was to take the Tenn-Tom route, not the Lower Mississippi. They took the Lower Mississippi, and it was nerve-wracking to avoid all of the four-wide barge traffic.

17. This seems like it would be such an adventure to canoe or kayak through. Making pit stops in Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans, Charleston, New York, etc.

    You would be stopping through some of the best food stops in the US too…

    How long of a trip would you reckon this takes doing manually?

18. Extra tidbit: you can do this while barely actually entering the Atlantic Ocean. The intracostal waterway is a series of canals bays and straights that allow someone to sail from Albany or Boston all the way down to Miami without ever actually entering the open ocean. This was crucial during WW2 when Uboats could be just about anywhere.

    There’s a similar bit along the gulf coast but I don’t believe they’re directly connected.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway

19. My uncle sold everything he owned bought a trawler and did the loop for a few years after retiring.