My wife and I are early retirees and she suggested we investigate doing the Great Loop after hearing of someone else’s adventure. We’ve bareboat chartered sailboats (mostly in the BVI’s) throughout the years and one time a 56’ power cruiser. I sailed on the Great Lakes in my teens and I’ve also done some bluewater sailing. So it’s not that we have zero experience, but we’ve never spent much more than a week together on a boat, and mostly had a lot of others aboard that we were looking out for.
My wife is not the camping type (her words) so I’m trying to figure out how to optimize comfort within the constraints of the Loop. Ideally we’d like to do the Lake Champlain route and the Trent Severn so we need an air draft under 17.5 feet (I think) and also would like to keep the draft under 4 feet. We’d like a boat less than 10 years old. The current sweet spot appears to be a Beneteau Swift 44 in the 2015-2019 vintage.
Hoping to learn a lot here from other’s experiences.
My wife is not the camping type (her words) so I’m trying to figure out how to optimize comfort within the constraints of the Loop. Ideally we’d like to do the Lake Champlain route and the Trent Severn so we need an air draft under 17.5 feet (I think) and also would like to keep the draft under 4 feet. We’d like a boat less than 10 years old. The current sweet spot appears to be a Beneteau Swift 44 in the 2015-2019 vintage.
Hoping to learn a lot here from other’s experiences.
