The Great Lakes Stand Out on a Great Loop Voyage

Published: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 7:00 am
By: Bruce Armstrong

Cruising America’s Great Loop is one of the premier boating adventures available in North America, and many Loopers consider the Great Lakes portion of the Loop to be the best part. All boats making a Great Loop trip must spend their summer crossing the Great Lakes, regardless of their choice of route.

My wife Susan and I spent four summers on our Nordhavn 35 Gulf Cart completing the Loop, logging over 7,000 miles along the way. Our voyage began in Naples, Florida, and took us south around Florida’s tip, then up the US East Coast, through Lake Champlain into Canada, across the Great Lakes, through Chicago and back to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Illinois, Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers and the Tombigbee Waterway. We spent more time in the Great Lakes than is common, particularly in Lake Michigan.

A typical Looper route across the Great Lakes begins in Oswego, New York. Most Loopers make the connection from the Hudson River to Lake Ontario via the Erie and Oswego Canals. They cross from Oswego to Kingston, Ontario, by various courses from a one-day, 60-mile crossing to a leisurely number of days spent in the Thousand Islands. From Kingston, it is west to Trenton to enter the Trent-Severn Waterway.

The Trent-Severn Waterway is noticeably different from any of the other canals encountered on the Loop. The other canals were all built for military or commercial purposes, and were designed to get boats from one place to another in the most direct route the terrain would allow. Not so the Trent-Severn. This waterway developed over a 90-year period from the 1830’s into the 1920’s as man-made canals interconnected rivers and lakes. The route zigzags across the Ontario terrain like a jagged scar, ambling through the Trenton River, Kawartha Lakes, Lake Simcoe and the Severn River, plus 30 miles of land cuts, for some 240 miles, to go less than half that distance in a direct line.

Completing the Trent-Severn puts you in the east end of Georgian Bay at the beginning of the Small Craft Channel through the 30,000 Islands. The narrow passages of the Small Craft Channel are awesome, inspiring and scary. The 30,000 Islands may be a literal count. Some are huge, but most are small — the size of a car, or bus, or house, rising only a few feet above the clear water. The granite is pink, black, peach, gray, white and red. The colors are in layers and stacks and veins. And from every crevice, crack and depression holding some thin soil, grows every shade of green imaginable as grasses and bushes and trees scrape life from this hard base. In narrow channels, it is not unusual to be in 40 feet of water passing by an island less than a boat length away. Georgian Bay is no place for casual navigation. And yet, if you pay attention and are careful, you are rewarded with some of the most spectacular country you can boat through.

We entered the North Channel at Little Current and cruised west enjoying some of the most idyllic anchorages possible. We swam, picked blueberries, hiked and fished from stops in the Benjamin Islands, Oak Bay, Beardrop Harbor and Long Point Cove. After stops in Blind River and Thessalon, we returned to US waters and spent several days on Mackinac Island.

Most Loopers cruise down the western shore of Lake Michigan, stopping at the state’s excellent Harbors of Refuge on their way to Chicago. Unfortunately, many hurry their trip to get off Lake Michigan before winter storms roil the waters. We were fortunate to winter our boat in Milwaukee and be back on Lake Michigan in summer, plenty early in the season to explore the Lake. Our trip was a clockwise circuit of the Lake from Milwaukee to Chicago. We particularly enjoyed Green Bay. We attended a fish boil in Door County, spent days at Peninsula State Park, biked Washington Island, hiked Rock Island, and spent several days at Fayette Historic Site in Michigan. Beaver Island, with its quirky history, was a treat. The six weeks we spent cruising Lake Michigan were as good as any part of the Great Loop.

Coming Full Circle: A Voyage on America’s Great Loop - A book that tells the story of our adventures along America’s waterways, on the Great Lakes and beyond. It is a celebration of live-aboard boating and cruising. It is a commentary on the places we visited. The book describes the joys and challenges of the journey with a sense of humor, of hauling laundry through marinas, picking blueberries in Canada, hiking for groceries, watching gorgeous sunsets in isolated anchorages, and arriving at a new port in time for a local festival. It tells about the community of boaters on the Loop, of sharing long water crossings with other boats and celebrating with them at dinner that night. It is a story of discovering new places, new friends, new foods and new ideas.

This book will bring back memories for those who have boated the Great Loop. It will get the adrenalin pumping for those who are getting ready to start the Great Loop. And for those who haven’t considered the trip before, this book may cause people to add boating the Great Loop to their to do list.

Coming Full Circle: A Voyage on America’s Great Loop is available at www.ArmstrongTravelVentures.com, where you can also read more about the book and the authors and see photography of the voyage.