June 3, 2018 - Final Stats Update

Independence crossed her wake (finished the Great Loop) on June 3, 2018 at 10:10 AM, 399 days and 40 minutes after we began. It was the trip of a lifetime. It was a bittersweet day, good to be home, but I am going miss the adventure and challenges we faced and met each day. I think Linda and I actually became closer friends and mates than we have ever been before, we met some very dear friends, saw some amazing sites and basically enjoyed a 399 day vacation. What more could you ask for? Well, for me I’m ready to go again, but Linda wants to be home near the kids and other family and we will be doing several weekend trips this fall and next spring we plan to do a two or three month trip on the Chesapeake Bay.

Our final stats for our Loop:

Miles Travelled          6564

Days Travelled           147

Hours Travelled         761

Fuel Consumed         4192 gallons

Miles per gallon         1.57

Average Speed           8.62 MPH

Locks Traversed        173

Bridges Crossed        677, of which 66 were in one day on the Chicago River

Tunnels Crossed        8

Days lost to weather      58

Days lost to repairs        13

With this adventure over, it back to home and getting the house ready to sell, renovating and moving into the condo, and doing some much needed cosmetic and maintenance work on Independence. She did a fantastic job and never let us down, a few bruises and blemishes, but very sound and dependable the whole trip. One of the questions that loopers always talk about is what is the perfect boat? For us, Independence is the perfect boat, plenty of room, easy to handle, reasonably efficient and most of all very dependable.

As you look at the stats, it looks like a very scary long trip, but in reality it was 147 day trips of about 45 miles each, with no schedule or pressure to go on any particular day. We learned that if the weather did not cooperate, we stayed put and waited until the conditions were to our satisfaction. If we found a place we wanted to stay longer we did, if we found out about a local event happening that we wanted to see, we just stayed or went there. It was truly a very relaxing and stress free vacation that I’ll never forget.