Spend Summer Sailing the Great Loop

Every year, hundreds of travelers sail America’s Great Loop on just about every kind of boat imaginable, large and small. Typically, this long route takes about a full year to experience.

Imagine the Great Loop as a roughly drawn oval hugging the shores of the eastern half of the United States. This oval would begin in upstate New York or Lake Ontario and follow the Great Lakes in a westerly direction, until it shoots out the top of Lake Michigan before heading to the Mississippi River, then following the Gulf around Florida and back up to the East Coast before reaching New York again. Some travelers switch the route up to include stops in Canada or the Caribbean. The route is rarely far from land, making it easier to remain safe and also make stops in certain destinations along the way, from Cleveland or Miami to St. Louis or New Orleans.

Regardless of how you do it, though, it’s a type of traveling that has its own culture — kind of like backpacking through Europe or Asia, or hiking the entirety of the Appalachian Trail. Many travelers on this route are figuring it out as they go, living jobless on a predetermined budget they compiled before starting. Others are stopping and going as they feel like it.

If you’d like to experience the Great Loop, but only have a summer to do so, you can easily experience a small portion of the route to get a feel for it, then later determine if it’s a year-long commitment you’d like to make. Many experienced travelers advise sailing the Great Lakes in the summer to avoid bad weather, starting in Buffalo and ending in Chicago. You can do this in as little as one week, or make a roundtrip in two.

The America’s Great Loop Cruiser’s Association has more resources and information to help plan your experience with the Great Loop, no matter how long you plan to be gone.