Inside Angle: The Great Golden Loop

In breaking down the Great Loop, Bill Prince finds a journey that gives both boaters and boats a second life.

Doing the Loop is becoming as popular as filling Eliquis prescriptions among people who owned Led Zeppelin t-shirts 40 years ago. Even so, the America’s Great Loop Cruisers Association (AGLCA) claims it’s still rare for people to actually complete the 6,000 mile circle route that connects the Atlantic, the Gulf, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. They say more people summit Mount Everest every year than complete the Loop. (At first glance it’s clear they’re not the same people.) But it seems you can’t go to any marina in the eastern half of the U.S. without seeing a white or golden “Looper” burgee somewhere. All the kids are doing it.

Except they’re not exactly kids anymore. One guy did it on a jet ski at age 50, but the Great Loop may be more accurately referenced as the Golden Loop, as most Loopers are into their golden years by the time they have the means and the wide open calendar to complete the great circle. The member association may as well be called the AGLCAARP, as the average age of Looper couples is firmly between “no longer working” and “still ambulatory.” Admittedly, it’s not the broadest window for a lot of people who haven’t trotted up the face of Mount Everest lately. Can someone tell me if an AARP membership comes with a Looper burgee by default?

My wife and I aspire to be Loopers one day, and many an evening sunset on the hook has been spent pondering what the best Loop boat is. No right answer there, except the boat needs to be under 19 feet 2 inches tall for a few seconds in Chicago. Generally, it’s smart to find the smallest boat that a given pair of Loopers find comfortable, as cruising aboard a 38-footer opens up more dockage and anchoring options than doing so aboard the Carnival Vista. Your results may vary depending on how well you and the missus get along, but 38- to 45-feet seems to be a sweet spot.

Having met many Loopers who pass through my home port on Lake Michigan, I have noticed a trait that many Looper boats have in common with Loopers themselves—the boats are no spring chickens, either! Part of this has to do with the simple fact that a new 40-foot powerboat in 2023 is at least a million-dollar proposition whereas a perfectly comfortable 35 year-old double cabin motoryacht can be had for pennies on the proverbial dollar. But there’s more to it than just money.

Flip the pages of this magazine. Look at the ads. The new boats under 45 feet today are 60-knot dayboats. Want to do the Loop at warp speed? Alright. Buy a center console with 1,600 horsepower, but don’t start in December.

There just aren’t many liveaboard 40-footers being built anymore. In the last century they were pumped out by the thousands from entry-level builders like Sea Ray, Carver, Silverton and Bayliner. Twin inboard, aft cabin cruisers like these and trunk cabin Taiwanese trawlers like those from the 1970s and ‘80s just aren’t in demand in today’s market. But they’re ideal Looper boats! So, like the Loopers living out their golden years with purpose, the aft cabin cruisers of the 1980s are being given a chance to do much the same. Like an old Golden Retriever who spent a lifetime at the foot of the couch but finally gets to hunt, these boats are finally doing what they were designed to do. Golden years, indeed!

There’s a future Looper boat two slips down the dock from my convertible. It’s got “sidewalks” and it has never moved more than a quarter mile from the slip to the TravelLift well in the decade we’ve been neighbors. This boat is just taking up space. But one day this boat will find a new owner, see the world and get more action in a year than it’s had over its entire, stupid, boring life tied to just one dock.

So the next time you see an old trawler or aft cabin cruiser with a brown stained bow wave mustache, flying a golden AGLCAARP burgee, in a transient slip near you, take a moment to appreciate what the Loopers and their old boats are up to—living their best life in their golden years.

Next stop, Mount Everest!

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This article originally appeared in the January 2023 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/column/inside-angle-the-great-golden-loop