This is just the beginning...

The adventure is yet to come. The captain and I have enjoyed long distance cruising for quite sometime. Our current boat is a 1998 Bayliner Pilothouse 4788. We bought it in Graysonville, MD Oct 2004. It is our fifth boat. We bought it specifically to cruise the Great Loop.

Before the dream of the Great Loop, we had cruised the circumference of Lake Erie, the Detroit River into Lake Huron (along the Canadian side north to Tobramory), the Georgian Bay and the North Channel. We cruised the Niagra River and the West End of the Erie Canal. We also cruised through the Welland Canal to Toronto and the Trent-Severn Waterway. It was that one trip that we met the Loopers online and found them in a gathering at Petersbourough, ON, CA. From there the seed was planted and we began to read about the Great Loop.

Having made passage through the locks in the Trent-Severn with friends on their Silverton Aft Cabin Cruiser, we learned what 'locking' was all about and developed an understanding of the kind of boat we would want to use on the Great Loop. We had seen many Bayliner Pilothouses beginning with the 45. When the 4788 came out with no teak to maintain, I was in love.

Our first boat was a 1956 Trojan Cruiser with mahogany coming out the ying-yang! We spent the whole summer varnishing, sanding, varnishing. The next year we sold it and bought a 1963 Trojan Cruiser (ReeBee). It had a marine plywood hull (no need to swell the lapstriking) and teak decks fore and aft (that spells teak out the yink-yang!). I spent the whole summer striping and applying a mixture of linseed oil and turpentine. My knees felt like I should have become a nun.

We kept ReeBee for 2 years. The happiest day of my life was when we traded ReeBee for our first 'plastic' boat; a 1987 Bayliner Motoryacht 3288 (Camelot). It only had a smattering of teak to care for. However, the little Hino Deisel engines left the boat well underpowered. The captain wanted some speed. Camelot lasted 3 years and along came SundayTripper, a 1989 Bayliner Motoryacht 3870. It had twin Ford 305 engines and top speed was 18 knots. The captain was delighted. We kept Sunday Tripper for 14 years. It was a lovely boat but not what we wanted for Looping.

The captain began internet searching off and on from 2002 until late summer of 2004. We contacted a broker in Graysonville, MD and set a date to look at three Bayliner Motoryacht 45s. We went to Maryland with great expectations and were disappointed in the condition of the boats. Our broker took us to see one more boat, a 4788 that we had not seen on the internet. Once we were on this boat, we knew there was no turning back. This was going to be our boat.

We negotiated for weeks. Thank goodness for the Strobs and Honey Let's Get a Boat. I wrote down everything that went wrong with their boat and made sure that our surveyor inspected all these areas. He found problems in many of the same areas and the wrongs were righted before we completed the transaction.

The captain and the first mate now had a boat for Looping (Ocean Breeze)...and needed to bring it from Graysonville, MD in the Chesapeake Bay to Marblehead, OH on the south shore of Lake Erie. In essence, we would be starting our Loop without being 'Loopers'!