Great Loop Chronicles Part 36
The Great Loop Chronicles follow the travels of OPTIMA Batteries staffer, Jim McIlvaine, as he travels America's Great Loop, a 6000+ nautical mile journey around the Eastern United States.
Waking up at Crow's Nest in Venice was another remarkable contrast from conditions we experienced when we arrived there the previous afternoon. No current and calm winds greeted the sunrise for our final day on the Great Loop. If you haven't been following from the beginning, we are not stopping in Cape Coral because we are crossing our wake.
We've been living on the boat for about two months. During that time, I haven't really had a good night's sleep, even on the nights when I was away from the boat. Nights on the boat, even when docked at a marina, saw me getting up three or four times each night to check on lines, fenders or other odd noises. In almost every instance, there was nothing concerning, but it was the very rare instances when I had to make an adjustment of some kind, that kept waking me up throughout the nights.
Taking naps during the day helped a little, but I found myself waking up exhausted every morning. My appetite hadn't gone away, but I wasn't eating as much as I normally did and I ended up losing more than 25 pounds when I finally stepped on a scale to check. I found myself worn out mentally and physically by the entire experience. It was an amazing, incredible journey that I highly recommend to anyone even remotely interested in it. It's more beautiful than you imagine and you'll be overwhelmed by how friendly the people are, who you'll meet along the way. I just came to the realization, that I wasn't suited to make that journey...at least not on that boat and not with my wife and young children aboard.
It was a great bonding experience for our family, but in the back of my mind, I was always worried about their safety. Even though I knew I would never put them in danger, I couldn't get past the concerns I had about how I navigated the boat, where we stopped for the night or the general condition of the boat at all times.
The run to Cape Coral from Venice punctuated those feelings, as we ran about 52 miles through the Intracoastal waterway over about four hours. Some of the route had no speed limit, while other parts had no wake, minimal wake or it wasn't clear what speed was allowed. There were areas where I thought the signs indicated no wake, but we were passed by other boats who were running at normal operating speed.
Intersections in the intracoastal were a little confusing with a multitude of pilings sticking out of the water, but I was able to figure things out and make our way to the private residence where we would be docking the boat in Cape Coral. Cape Coral itself is a fascinating community with what seems like as many liquid streets as paved roads. AI suggests about 30-40% of the private homes in Cape Coral are considered "waterfront" property, compared to the national average of about 0.4 to 0.6%.
The physical layout of Cape Coral has presented some well document infrastructure issues for the community, but for the purposes of us docking a boat in protected waters, it was ideal. The network of canals into the neighborhood where we docked were calm and we were able to find our way to the correct house, by entering the street address into Waze and comparing that to Navionics.
I don't think we could've picked a better boat than the Carver 466 for our family to do the Loop and we miss it already. The next owners will have a very capable boat that is spacious, comfortable and surprisingly easy to operate. While this may mark the end of my family's journey on the Great Loop in this iteration, I'm not sure I'm done with it yet. My wife and daughter definitely want to continue and I have a lot of friends who are interested in doing it.
The thought of my wife and I joining another couple, once all our kids are grown and out of the house (less than ten years from now), has some appeal. I also came across several pocket cruisers in our travels that would not be family-friendly for the four of us, but would be perfect for a couple and very capable of making good time, while navigating both shallow and rough seas.
However, there were multiple instances on our trip this year, where we openly wondered if we'd be physically capable of getting on or off the boat in certain marinas, if we were another ten years older? That was especially true as the tide changed the access to the boat from fixed docks. OPTIMA Batteries sponsored angler, Edwin Evers, who joined us for the Gulf crossing also talked about taking his bass boat on the Loop, which is more viable than one might think. He may just need to wait for weather windows at times, but when the windows are open, a bass boat can cover a lot of water in a hurry.
When we made it to Cape Coral, I rented another car, drove my family home and brought the pickup truck back with another rented trailer to offload our personal items. My wife and I spent one last night onboard, docked in Cape Coral and she again rose to see the sun rise, one of our favorite parts of the trip. As much as I knew it was the right decision for me to stop, it still pains me that I introduced my wife and family to something they weren't that enthused about initially and then ended the experience for them, just as they were embracing the new lifestyle I could never get comfortable in.
We decided to continue our trip on land, see some friends and family we had planned to see on the Great Loop, but make our transits in our pickup truck instead. I'll continue documenting that journey on my personal social media channels, but I'll hit the pause button for now as it relates to the Great Loop Chronicles here. Many people take multiple years to finish the Great Loop and I may be one of them. If I do resume the journey at some point in the future, I'll resume documenting it here, if I'm still able to do so. Until then, thanks for reading!
