What is the Great Loop?
It's a circumnavigation of the eastern part of the US by waterways. It's approximately 6000 miles (plus many opportunities for side trips). It's typically followed seasonally - winter in the warmth of Florida, spring traveling up the ICW, summer in NY and Canada and then fall heading down the riverways of the mid west. Many loopers complete it in a year.
Here's the official map as published by the American Great Loop Cruisers Association:
Some of our key Great Loop posts:
- Our Great Loop Plans
- Great Loop Boat Specifications
- Shopping for and Buying Our Boat
- Why we Selected our Bayliner 4788 for the Great Loop
- Tour of our Bayliner 4788 — Y-Not
- Sloopers Slow Looping: Eight Years on the American Great Loop and More to Go!
Our Interactive Great Loop Map
We set off on the Great Loop in April 2017, intending to completed it in 2-3 years, taking it slowly. When it gets too cold to boat, we planned to put the boat in storage and return to our RV-home waiting for us in the warmth of the south.
Reality has been - we just love living aboard & cruising in our boat, and are finding even a slower pace of travel is suiting us better. And of course, in 2020 the pandemic put us on pause for a few years having us turn back to a favorite side trip - Sanford, FL.
We officially returned to active looping April 2024, picking up where we left off in Charleston, SC later that summer.
We find we love actively cruising for a few weeks, anchoring out along the way. We're also frequently taking as many side trips as we can, and stopping in places many faster paced Loopers skip. And then finding our next cool coastal city with a marina with easy access to stuff and a great monthly rate.
Click on the area of the map you're interested in to start browsing our travelogues & videos about each stop (individual posts also at the bottom of this page).
The map & routing above is provided by the WordPress plug-in Nomad World Map that utilizes all of our blog travelogue entries.
How We Hopscotch Our Vehicle Between Marinas
Long time followers know to brace themselves on April 1st around here – you just simply don’t trust ANYTHING my sweetie posts that day. Hopefully you got a kick out of his dream version of how we move our MINI Cooper between ports. However, many of you are probably left wondering just how actually move […]
St. Johns River Cruise – Part 3: Lake George to Sanford (Living in a Wildlife Documentary!)
And now, the final episode on our southbound cruise of the St. Johns River – the final push into Sanford. If you missed the first parts, be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 first. And as always, the video version of this segment. This is our very first 4K rendered video – […]
Our RV, Van & Boat Mobile Internet Setup – 19 Years of Keeping Online (Updated: December 2025)
When we first hit the road in 2006 to travel full-time, being able to work remotely utilizing mobile internet was absolutely essential in pursuing our nomadic dreams. We started off in a super tiny travel trailer, we were working remotely as software developers and technology consultants. While we were self employed, at the time we […]
St. Johns River Cruise – Part 2: Deep Creek to Georgetown (Twisty Creeks and Tasty Shrimp)
Time to pick back up the travelogue, this time the second part of our St. Johns River cruise heading into Sanford. If you missed the first part, click on back to get an overview of this little side voyage. First, the video version of this segment with lots of awesome drone & time lapse footage: […]
Starting our Cruise Up the St. Johns River – Part 1: Jacksonville to Deep Creek
First of all, happy new year! We hope it’s off to a great start. Ours has been a little rough with fighting ‘holiday crud’, a crazy workload, boat projects and multiple midge invasions. But we’re coming up for air, and ready to start filling in the travelogue a bit. Hard to believe we’ve been in […]
Happy Holidays from Technomadia!
Wishing you and yours a joyous holiday season! For the first time in a few years, we are spending the holidays at home – instead of traveling off to visit family. We’ve been enjoying getting into the holiday spirit here in Sanford – attending holiday festivities, time with friends, hanging with our dock-mates and hosting […]
How Much Does It Cost to Stay in Marinas?
When you share your life online, one of the most common questions you’ll get is ‘How Much Does It Cost?’. One of the top questions we got when ramping up to cruise after over a decade of RVing was – how would the costs differ? Now that we’ve got nearly 2 years under our hull […]
Letting Serendipity Do the Steering (We’re Staying on the Boat This Winter)
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over our years of perpetual travel is to trust. Trust that things will work out. Even when you think you have a plan, look at it as setting intentions and be open to shifts. The past month has been a reminder of that. Our ‘plans’ going forward have […]
”By All Rights, That Engine Should Start” – Suzuki DF15A Outboard & Customer Service Failure
Our first stop after leaving Jacksonville to cruise up the St. Johns River was Doctors Lake – only 12 nautical miles up stream. We figured this would be a good short first hop to get back into the groove of living on the water, and we had heard that you could dinghy ashore at Whitey’s […]
Two Months in Jacksonville – Getting our City On, Boat Projects, Social Life
We pulled into the Marina at Ortega Landing in Jacksonville in mid-August with a one week reservation. And ended up staying two months. We’re pretty sure by now you’re no longer surprised by these extended stays. A couple weeks of active cruising followed by a month or two still is suiting us quite right these […]
Wrap Up: Great Loop 2018 Cruising Season – Florida’s ICW
With our arrival to Jacksonville, we consider this 2018 Great Loop cruising season to be a wrap. When we set off from Miami in April, we had intentions of making it to the Chesapeake by summer to escape hurricane season. But fatigue from the months prior building up from Hurricane Irma, the submerged channel marker […]
Rendezvous in Jacksonville – Tides & Currents and a Rescue!
We could have easily stayed in St. Augustine on our mooring ball a few more days.. perhaps even weeks. But we had an exciting rendezvous planned up in Jacksonville with dear friends. So.. we untied from the ball and continued our northward cruise. First, our video recap of this segment: First Stop: Pine Island Anchorage […]
