Loopers!

SHIP'S LOG:

Current Location: Still at the Isle of Hope Marina (Good deal - four days for the cost of two!)

The marina is filling up as a front gets ready to pass through the area tonight and tomorrow. I have had enough rain and thunder and lightning on the hook in the past month, so I am staying put to at least Sunday before I head north again. Next time I drop the hook, if all goes according to plan, I will be out of Georgia and back into South Carolina.

Here in the marina, here are a number of "Loopers." Loopers are people, usually in powerboats, especially trawlers, who have done or are doing "The Great Loop." The Great Loop is basically a circumnavigation of the eastern half of the United States. Starting from Say New York City and going south, you go done the Jersey Coast, up Delaware Bay, through the C & D Canal, down the Chesapeake, down the Intracoastal Waterway(ICW), around the tip of Florida at Key West, up the west coast of Florida, west along the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi River, up the Mississippi, up the Ohio River into the Great Lakes, across the Great Lakes, through the canals and into the Hudson River and back down the Hudson River to New York City. You can start anywhere along the route and go clockwise or counter clockwise. Some people do it in stages depending on the seasons and their circumstances, going so far and then putting up the boat and returning home. Then they come back, get the boat ready and do the next stage. The couple on the boat behind me are from Illinois and have been at it for three years. Two other couples on two other boats across the dock from me are doing it all in one shot and they are from Ohio. One of them flies a golden Great Loop pennant from their bow indicating that they have already completed the Great Loop once. They are all headed to a Loopers' Rendezvous in Norfolk, VA to be held sometime this spring. And you thought the people who just cruise up and down the ICW were crazy!