On Thursday morning, October 13th, our good friend Jeff Homan drove our truck down to Grand Rivers to Green Turtle Bay to bring us home. We returned home to pick up our trailer, get new tires put on, visit with family, and catch our breath before returning on Sunday to bring the boat home.


We arrived back at Green Turtle Bay on Sunday and met Kim Russo, friend and director of the America's Great Loop Cruiser Association (AGLCA), and her boyfriend and our friend, Michael Martin for lunch at Patty's. We hadn't seen them since our delicious Italian dinner on Statin Island, New York. Then we headed to the boat to begin to get her ready to be trailered home. We enjoyed seeing Looper friends and enjoyed one last docktale with the crews of Smile with the Rising Sun, It's About Time, and Amy Marie. The crew of Inconceivable surprised us as they passed by as they headed to Patty's for dinner.


The next morning, we did a final pumpout, topped off the gas and then cruised over to the sling lift to have Long Recess lifted out and placed on our waiting trailer. We trailed her home without much fuss, the exceptions being a big bump on the highway near Louisville that popped the bow seat up and nearly off its hinges. A quick stop at a roadside rest and some ducktape and we were headed north again for home.


Once home, we spent the next several days crossing tasks off our list and cleaning her up for winter storage. I took a break in the work to host a sleepover on the boat with Finn, our 9 year old nephew. He exclaimed several times, "I could literally live here!" We played games - chess, checkers, chicken foot and yahtzee - and slept on the boat with the space heater and lots of blankets, as the temperature dipped down into the 30s over night.


Long Recess went to our local service provider, South Shore Marina, for routine service work and then made the trip north to be put away for the winter months in heated storage on Lake Erie in Port Clinton.


Here are some stats from the trip -

  • 153 Voyages
  • 20 States
  • 2 Countries
  • 7,058 Miles
  • 738.5 Cruising Hours
  • 321 Days on the Loop
  • 128 Locks
  • 4,594 Gallons of Gas
  • 76 Pumpouts
  • 119 Different Marinas
  • 23 Lock Walls/Municipal Walls
  • 9 Anchorage
  • Countless friendships, ice cream cones, sunrises and sunsets, dolphins chasing us in our wake, eagle sightings on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, and enough memories to last a lifetime