Crossing Our Wake

For the past 7 years or so, we have been members of America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association, with the goal of traveling around the 5000+ miles of waterways circling the eastern part of America.  The boaters of AGLCA (the “Loopers”) show their membership by flying a pennant or burgee on the bow of their boat: a white one for doing a “loop in progress”, and a gold one for “loop completion”.  On October 22, we completed our circumnavigation and qualified for the Gold Burgee.

Look! There's our wake from 4 years ago!!

The phrase we use for completing the loop is to “cross our wake” which we created some time ago when we were last at this exact spot.  Almost 4 years ago, we moved the boat from Chattanooga back to New Orleans, and passed through the junction of the Tennessee River and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (at the common border of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama).  Wouldn’t you know it, but our wake from 4 years ago was still there (yeah, right) & we happily crossed it to complete our circle.

Our white burgee was so old, faded & torn that I told
Sue that we had to either buy a new white one
or just go ahead & earn a gold one!

Because we live full-time on the boat, we traveled some extra miles during our 4-year loop.  I’m guessing that we went over 6000 miles cruising north for the summer & south for the winter, and all of it at 10 miles per hour!  We traveled from the Tennessee River, down the Tenn-Tom Waterway to Mobile Bay, across Florida to the east coast, up the Atlantic ICW, through the Chesapeake Bay, past New York City up the Hudson River, across the Erie Canal and through the Great Lakes, south from Chicago into the Illinois River, the Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Cumberland River, and finally back to the Tennessee River.

We feel we did something "above & beyond the call of duty"
to earn this gold burgee.

Probably the biggest thing I learned during these travels is how different are the geographic areas of cruising.  Cruising on the Tennessee River is totally different from the knowledge and skills needed to cruise on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, or on the Great Lakes.  And even though some areas were relatively easy to cruise, there were many situations which challenged our seamanship skills and endurance.  I feel that we’ve really accomplished something by reaching this milestone.

But it all doesn’t stop here.  When we finish being landlubbers for the next 2 weeks, we’ll take the boat south to New Orleans this winter, and then over to the Florida Keys and to the Bahamas in the spring.  There’s more sights to see & we aim to see them!