The Great Loop-lets talk about that to get me outta my funk....

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Once you clear the low bridge in Chicago is the rest of the trip to the Gulf possible with an ICW compliant rig? Just wondering.......


I posted a pic of a L380 a while back with it's mast strapped on btw.

Maybe...There are several 50ft bridges but being the river system, water levels change with rain and snow melt. You can easily lose 10-15ft of clearance and in bad floods, even more.

We had a 43ft mast height and put the mast up in Kentucky our first time around. But honestly other than removing clutter from the deck, don't expect to do much sailing. It's mostly running in rivers where you have to stay clear of barge traffic (don't think for a second, you will have right-of-way as they often take up 80% of the channel width going around corners sideways). Even the lakes above dams are often shallow outside the channels.

[LauraleeG]

Originally Posted by Tingum

I’ve done it twice now and the best advice is not to be in any hurry. There is a lot to see and experience. I’m very pro bike. We put well over a thousand miles on ours folding bikes. They were great to explore Washington DC. Also a good reliable dinghy to explore with.

Great- did you tow the dinghy most of the time?

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Once you clear the low bridge in Chicago is the rest of the trip to the Gulf possible with an ICW compliant rig? Just wondering.......

Controlling clearance on the Illinois Waterway downstream of "that bridge" is 47' over normal pool. There is some pool variation but ordinarily the river is within a foot or two of pool in the late summer and early fall when most people make the trip. Controlling clearance on the upper Mississippi is 60' over normal pool; there are three bridges with exactly 60' of clearance IIRC and several others with 60'-61' of clearance. Again there is some pool variation.


On the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, the bridges are nearly all exactly 52' over normal pool. There is ordinarily very little pool variation on the Tombigbee portion of the route. The relatively short section on the Tennessee River can have significant pool variation, usually short lived.


So in general, the 65' of vertical clearance normally present on the ICW does not exist on the inland rivers downstream of Chicago.

[LauraleeG]

Right-so bridges are a problem and since sailing realistically won’t be done- we thought best just to ship the mast....

[Sand crab]

Thanks everyone. I read about a company that takes your mast down at the Erie Canal and then reinstalls it at the other end. I guess that only makes sense if your final destination is the Great Lakes.

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Thanks everyone. I read about a company that takes your mast down at the Erie Canal and then reinstalls it at the other end. I guess that only makes sense if your final destination is the Great Lakes.

Typically sailboats following the Great Loop route carry or ship the mast from Troy to Buffalo. It is important to have the mast stepped (i.e. reinstalled) for the Great Lakes segment (from Buffalo to Chicago) both for stability and because it is preferable to sail rather than motor.


There are marinas in both the Troy and Buffalo area that offer mast storage for those boats exploring the canal systems that will return without crossing the Great Lakes. There are several possible itineraries in addition to just going out and then back the same way.

[Howard706]

There is a salesman, Tyler, from Centerpointe Services Milwaukee delivering a Cruisers 52 from Milwaukee Wi to Fort Meyers Fl right now and posting videos on Centerpointes FB site. Interesting to hear some of the issues and time involved going thru locks, and issues with fuel and marina facilities. He is going on the Tenn-tom route and a day or two from the gulf tonight. Of course not a sailboat but still interesting.

[theBigKahuna]

LauraLee, we're actually a 40' Leopard, not a mono, but 'indavertently' started the great loop last July. We do currently live in Chi, where Fuzzy Logic lives w/ us. We left Ft Lauderdale July of 2019, book-ended by Hurricane Dorian and Humberto (Dorian scared the poop out of us). Did the Gulf Stream to NC, then ICW to Norfolk, then back into Atlantic to NYC, up Hudson to Catskills, unstepped, did the Erie Canal, stepped again and made it to Buffalo. It was late Oct at that point and we were freezing so she stayed on the hard there 'till July this year and we did the Great Lakes amid pandemic isolating.

Plan to finish the Loop starting next Sept, unstepping, heading down Ill waterways to chase the mast to Alabama. Probably hang around the keys then FtL a good bit then Bahamas.

I left out A LOT of detail, adventures (we called the sphincter alerts...) out of 'brevity'. It is a GREAT adventure and worth every sunny day and crisis along the way. You're right, do not be in a hurry.... your boat and conditions will make sure of that!

Cheers,

jBrad & Kristen
s/v Fuzzy Logic

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Thanks everyone. I read about a company that takes your mast down at the Erie Canal and then reinstalls it at the other end. I guess that only makes sense if your final destination is the Great Lakes.

If you are a monohull, there is the stability advantage of of putting the mast up when you can.

For multihulls, the advantage is generally not there. If we do the loop again, we will seriously consider leaving the mast at home and just motoring.

[Captain Kev]

Originally Posted by Jammer

Enjoy the journey.


At present our boat is on the Mississippi near St. Paul and is small enough we can trailer it ourselves to nearby waters. I've given a lot of thought to the GL, and we've been along enough of the river and through enough of the locks to have some idea what it's like.


The "Great Loop" implies a circular passage. It is my observation that there are other ways to enjoy these waterways and that making a continuous circle unnecessarily constrains planning.


One possibility not usually considered is skipping Chicago and instead proceeding to Duluth then having the boat trucked the short distance to Stillwater. This skips "that bridge" and the many 47' bridges on the Illinois Waterway. There are marinas with mast stepping facilities at both Duluth and Stillwater and there is 60' clearance down river from Stillwater to the gulf (52' if you take the Tenn Tom). Depending on timing it is possible to leave the boat on the hard for the winter in either city.

This is such a great idea! I've been wanting to do the loop when I retire in two years but the Illinois river has been the worst dread. I fly into Midway every week as a pilot and the arrival is basically up the river from its mouth at the Mississippi. I have also driven to see areas just outside of downtown Chicago on the river. I would almost trailer to Alton to avoid it. Not only is the river nothing more then a sewage outlet for Chicago, it's one of if not the most crime ridden area in the country.

GREAT IDEA!!!

[theBigKahuna]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

If you are a monohull, there is the stability advantage of of putting the mast up when you can.

For multihulls, the advantage is generally not there. If we do the loop again, we will seriously consider leaving the mast at home and just motoring.

We used Hop-O-Nose to take it down.... VERY entertaining operation. I forgot on the Buffalo end, but if you're headed East, not West, he's the last place in the area to fuel up and rumor has it he won't sell you fuel if you unstep your mast before reaching him :-)

[The Sun King]

I have done the Mississippi Loop in my solar-powered Sun King expedition launch, so can comment on the choices of taking the Lower Mississippi or the Tenn-Tom down from Cairo. A 25' and 27' are under construction for my voyage on the full loop, the choice of which one to use pending sea trials.


Most people do not take the Mississippi down because there is no place to gas up other than Memphis and Greenville. I did not have that issue, powered by the sun, but I think that many power boats could make the trip by just carrying enough power to steer and revving up every now and then to blow out the soot. The current is generally strong enough that you move along at a good clip that way. The water can be pretty rough at times for a smaller boat, what with afternoon storms and 12,000hp pushboats making giant spiral rooster tails. I made up to 100 miles per day, but that is rough going in my tiny vessel.



The afternoon tornadoes you see on the news every night during the summer go through there. I hugged the bank, dashing for a creek inlet near New Madrid, just trying to stay rightside up. Summer hurricanes can be a worry, too, but can usually be avoided if you make that leg early in the season.



Once you get down to the industrial areas, like Baton Rouge, check your 6 for ships! The are big, fast and quiet. They can sneak up on you and don't mind giving you a nudge.



Given the lack of marinas, I anchored out most of the time. The turn at New Orleans to the Industrial Canal and the Waterway offers the craziest lock and drawbridge combo you'll see. It is the only place i got mixed in with a push boat. There were no mooring pins and only one line for us little guys. I held onto a shimp boat for dear life when the pushboat pulled out ahead of us. The Hi Tide marina east of NOLA has closed since I came through. The waterway from NOLA to Pearl River is practically abandoned and I saw no one when anchoring, waiting for fair weather across the Gulf.



The greatest hazard of the Mississippi may be the rock dams and the marker buoys that are almost NEVER where they belong. A couple of times I would change course to get on the right side of the nav aid, only to find it was lodged on some rocks and that ripple in the water was a submerged jetty waiting to rip my hull. Use your chart plotter! Mine wasn't working. The rock jetties are there to raise the water when the flow is low. If there is a towhead, the dam is usually at the lower end. Don't go between the towhead and the shore. You might not get out. Anchoring along a towhead might seem good shelter from pushboat wakes, but they know when the water is high enough to clear the rocks, so you could get a rude awakening.



The Tenn-Tom is a breeze. No 7 acre barge tows or giant pushboats. The transition from Upper Mississippi to Ohio would have to be a relief. I did it the other way and got bug-eyed looking at the difference! The water is wide and gentle. I don't know the status of the new lock. The old locks were flooded when I went through and a passing barge crew told me to blast on through. At the time of my passage, the new lock construction was a total zoo, but no problem to pass. At Paducah, the channel up to the Kentucky Dam, there was a miles-long line of barge tows waiting lock transit. Most loopers, I think, go up to the next lock, but the Kentucky Lake Marina's harbormaster gave me a tip and a phone number for the lockmaster. While the big guys are breaking up their tows to double-stuff the two lock chambers, they can work with us little guys and hasten passage. I may have waited a half hour. Call ahead, though.



Across the lakes, it is a breeze, with great opportunities for anchoring out. After the relatively narrow canal that takes you from the Tennessee to the Tombigbee segment, you get into a big recreational area. If it is a holiday weekend, you will not be alone and most of the boaters will be the once or twice a year variety, so keep a lookout.


Bobby's Fish Camp, near Coffeeville, may or may not be open. It has been popular for years. I met my wife there, hoping for a catfish dinner, but it didn't happen. A nice marina that is not marked is below the I-65 "Dolly Parton Bridge". A few miles down on the right is a house. Take the right fork and you'll eventually find a nice marina that has no transient docking fees. They told me people steal the signs as fast as they put them up, so they don't get enough transients to establish a fee.



Down at Mobile, you have choices on either side of the bay and an easy run to Pensacola. Mobile Bay CAN be treacherous during a storm. I can't tell you much beyond Pensacola, as I have not ventured east.



One thing you should know about both the Tenn-Tom and Lower Mississippi routes is the meniscus effect. If the water is falling, logs, limbs, old tires and dead animals will be close to the shore, depositing. When the water is rising they will be in the middle and care should be taken to avoid impact or prop fouling. I had to clear my prop a couple of times. This is a greater hazard going upstream. Prudent boaters will not run upstream after a good rain. The night I floated into Aberdeen, we had a good rain and the river rose nearly 20 feet and I didn't dare go out the next day. Speaking of Aberdeen, you might not want to try find the path in the dark!


That's all that comes to mind for now.

[BoatBumm]

I have done 3/4s of the Great Loop on my marvelous Pacific Seacraft Crealock 34 sailboat, “Serenity”. I started in Lake Ontario (my home waters), Trent-Severn to the Georgian Bay and then the North Channel, which is in my humble opinion by far THE BEST cruising grinds of the entire trip. Then to Lake Michigan, Chicago (mast has to come down there, and that’s where all the Caribbean pirates retired to - cost to put the mast up in Midland Ontario at the end of the T-S = $120 Canadian. Cost to take the mast down at Chicago and put it on the custom on-deck sawhorses I brought with me = $600!). Then the “fun” starts. Illinois River canal not too bad with tree debris, but you need to watch out. And getting past the miles long pinch point in the Illinois canal at the tow & barge staging area added many more grey hairs to what little hair I have left. Nothing like having to make a sudden U turn in a narrow waterway to avoid being run over by an oncoming tow that can’t stop, then finding a slightly wider area to pull over and get the hell out t’ way.

BUT then you get to the absolute skipper’s hell of the Mississippi River. I’m sure there are other skippers out there with either better or worse experiences than what I encountered there, but for me I’m sure glad it wasn’t any worse. I am still angry at the AGLCA and the various guidebook authors for in my view minimizing the Mississippi experience. When I arrived at Grafton, IL, I had planned to just stop there for one night and keep going. All the locals said NO, NO, NO! It’s too dangerous with the current and especially tree debris. I listened, and waited 12 days (along with other cruisers) for the River to keep rising, crest and start down. Finally told: “Well, it’s not great to leave now, but they’ve had the upstream locks closed, and they’re about to open them. Then all that tree debris that the locks have been holding back will come downstream. Plus the current will get stronger. You need to leave now.” People assume I was traveling at flood stage - nope! The River was at the high end of its medium stage, NOT flood stage.

The muddy Mississippi lives up to that name. You can see lots of floating tree debris, but there’s lots you cannot. About every minute there would be a THUNK as another piece hit the hull. I’m dodging as best I can. The debris tends to be in patches since all the parts of the tree that has been chopped up by the monstrous propellers of the tows as they head upriver tends to stay in a patch. But even when you’re not in one of those patches there was still debris to watch for as best you can. The debris ranges in size from small twigs to branches then full intact trees. Big logs were common.

And the current is still an issue in spots too. Although the cool part is having a 4-6 knot speed boost over the bottom. Around the bends the US Army Corps of Engineers has installed weirs underwater to control the water flow and bank erosion. Think of totally submerged breakwalls about 2-3 feet underwater. These are clearly marked on the charts and you can see them when you go zooming by as a hump in the water as it flows over them. You do not want to hit one of them. Your speed over the bottom is about 10-12 knots. I heard of sailboats hitting one and having the keel torn right off. Stay in the damn channel.

But it can get very turbulent in those bends. The one that my guidebook warned was likely the most turbulent was an especial challenge because I had the misfortune of arriving there right after two north bound back-to-back tows and their barges went through that bend. The tows throw huge standing wakes behind them from their prop wash that can persist for a 1/4 mile or so. The bow wakes off the tow/barges is trivial, but not the prop wash wakes. So that already turbulent bend had been further churned up by the tows. I felt as if I sailed into a washing machine. It was my wonderfully seaworthy sailboat that got us through that - not me.

BTW, the tow captains are wonderful. They don’t want any trouble either. They are courteous and helpful. An AIS transceiver is a mandatory piece of equipment in my opinion. It lets you “see” tows around a bend and them to see you. No other technology lets you see around bends in the River. You then work out with the tow captain which side he wants you to pass him on.

The current is strong enough that most sailboats trying to go upstream would just hover in one place relative to the bottom even at full throttle. Stopping somewhere requires careful planning in advance because if you miss the turn into a marina you’ll just go on by. Stopping at Hoppies was an interesting vector problem - doing a U turn at the exact right place then slowly angling/crabbing sideways against the current to reach the decaying barges to dock. Anchoring off the side of the River to spend the night presents another challenge of later raising anchor against a strong current flow. And I heard of anchored boats being trapped by pieces of tree debris fouling their anchor chain either causing the boat to drag anchor and/or making raising anchor very difficult.

I suffered prop damage on the River as twice I heard the telltale fast “wop, wop, wop...” noise as the prop hit a piece of tree. Unfortunately I started the voyage with an automatically feathering prop called a Max-Prop. It’s great under sail because the blades rotate to be parallel with the water flow - minimizing drag. But now I’m a powerboat until I reach Mobile, AL. At the end of the Mississippi portion the prop was acting strangely with a gradually increasing vibration. No point in diving on it. With the muddy water plus the strong current I wouldn’t have been able to tell anything anyway. Once I limped into Green Turtle Marina in Kentucky I had to have the boat hauled twice - first to inspect and remove the damaged prop, then again once a replacement arrived. The marina staff told me that about one in three boats arriving there had prop damage from the tree debris in the Mississippi. Take a spare prop, and have a sturdy fixed blade prop to start with.

Finally, before the trip I had been concerned about the Ohio River part of the trip - fighting my way 60 miles upstream against the current. But it was just the opposite. Yes, there was an opposing current, but if I stayed close to shore, still in 10-12 feet of water the current against me was only about 1/2 knot. No big deal. The tree debris was maybe 10% of what it was on the Mississippi, and the Ohio is so wide that the commercial traffic out in mid-River was so far away you just didn’t care.

I figure the about 220 miles of the Mississippi cost me about $3,000-4,000 in the form of extended marina stays and the costs associated with repairing the damaged prop. Fortunately no hull damage at all, other than obvious scuff marks in the bottom paint.

I’ll close with a comment from the skipper of another sailboat I buddy boated with down the Mississippi. As we turned into the Ohio I called him on VHF and jokingly asked if he was sure that he didn’t want to keep going down the Mississippi to New Orleans instead. His response (I wish I was clever enough to come up with the following): “I’d rather go to prison as a child molester than spend another god-damned minute on this god-damned River!” My sentiments exactly.

In my opinion the best way to do the Mississippi River portion? - hire a truck to haul your boat past that part.

Brian & Serenity

p.s. - Serenity & I made it around the loop, including a marvelous side trip to the Bahamas, as far as the Chesapeake Bay, but COVID blocked us from going any further. They closed the Bay to pleasure craft. I am planning to complete the loop in May/June 2021.

[owly]

Originally Posted by LauraleeG

Can someone switch / tell me how to switch this to monohull forum?!!
1) Ok- will ponder the mast issue.
2) what about dinghys?!

Why not the multihull forum? Don't multihulls do the great loop? A multihull definitely be the most fuel efficient as well as the most comfortable. Probably half the fuel consumption for the same speed as a comparable monohull, and the shallow draft makes them beachable and allows access to places the monos can't go.

[LauraleeG]

Originally Posted by owly

Why not the multihull forum? Don't multihulls do the great loop? A multihull definitely be the most fuel efficient as well as the most comfortable. Probably half the fuel consumption for the same speed as a comparable monohull, and the shallow draft makes them beachable and allows access to places the monos can't go.

Haha, that may be true- but I have a monohull which I love!