What is the Great Loop? What is the AGLCA?

In late 2016, we announced we were starting our hunt for a boat with the intentions of pursuing the American Great Loop.

It’s an adventure we feel is more akin to ‘RVing on Water’ than setting off circumnavigating the world with epic blue water passages (like our buddies Nikki & Jason Wynn are totally rocking!).

It’s a journey more within our grasps while still working our full time careers, desiring staying connected to friends & loved ones, and still keeping our RVing connections.

But yet only about 150 boats complete the Loop each year.

The Great Loop is essentially a circumnavigation of the eastern part of America (and optionally, Canada), and sticks pretty much to inland waterways with very few needed open water passages.

The eastern part of the US is basically a big island that we’re going around!

While we’re doing it very slowly (#sloopers) and at this pace will likely take a decade or more – that’s not typical. Many follow the Loop seasonally, making it roughly a 1-year 6000 mile adventure always staying in ideal weather conditions.

We’re currently in Charleston, SC enjoying our next extended stay. Our arrival officially rolled our Great Loop odometer over the 1000 nautical mile mark since we left Punta Gorda, Florida in April 2017. At this point, we have been looped by multiple repeat Loopers. We’re cool with that.

Charleston is also home of the AGLCA headquarters, and we were honored this week to have Kim Russo, director, onboard.  And she agreed to join us on YouTube Live to talk about the Great Loop and the work the AGLCA does.

Here’s the archive:

It’s about 45 minutes long, but it’s jam packed with information from what the Great Loop is, how it’s typically pursued, some of the outliers (like us still working sloopers), boats used for the Loop, the 2020 lock closure obstacles and an update on the anchoring laws in Florida and Georgia that are impacting cruisers.

If you’re considering the Great Loop, we highly recommend joining the AGLCA (America’s Great Loop Cruisers Association). They have tons of resources available to help ramp up your research, from choosing your boat, budgeting for your trip and tapping into community.

We joined about a year before starting our boat hunt and maintain our membership, and feel it’s very worthwhile.

We’re also featured on their Great Loop Radio Podcast this week (recorded in our salon) talking about mobile internet options for Loopers.

Website Refresh!

You might notice the blog has a new coat of paint! (Go check out the main Technomadia.com front page!)

Our friends Jeanette & Dennis of Upthentic Creative just rolled out a new modern theme for us. We love these guys – they manage both this site and our work site, the Mobile Internet Resource Center (which had a major rewrite earlier this year).

They’re fellow nomads we met on the road years ago, and we’ve enjoyed growing our friendship and working relationship over the years. And they sure do make our lives a ton easier by taking over the backend development and branding side of things, allowing us to focus on content.