6/9/10 – Brick, New Jersey – Home Port

Pre-dawn in the New Jersey Intracoastal Waterway north of Atlantic City

Getting lighter

Dawn breaks

Red sky at morning - sailor take warning.

All is calm.

The gold burgee signifying our completion of America's Great Loop.

We were both up early and anxious about the tide heights, since we decided that we would return home by the Intracoastal Waterway route which twists and turns through the somewhat shallow marsh-lands of southeastern New Jersey, rather than take the outside route up the Atlantic Ocean and into Barnegat Inlet.

Because the winds were predicted to pick up from the southeast gusting to 25 mph, and rain was also in the forecast, the inside route seemed to be a better choice. “Reflection” left Gardner’s Basin at 5:10 a.m., and the scene was really lovely as we entered the ICW with the dawn sun breaking through the clouds over the ocean. We made our way carefully through the channels, always making sure we were within the channel markers so as not to go aground. Our depth sounder alarm went off several times, but we were always able to find deeper water.

A number of our fellow “Loopers” had problems in the Little Egg Inlet area, but we did not because we observed the markers, not relying solely on our GPS chartplotter, but on our actual visual sightings of the buoys and daymarkers. There were hardly any boats on the water, and our trip past the many summer homes on Long Beach Island was quite pleasant.

After about 4 hours George phoned our next-door neighbor, Ernie, to ask him to make sure that there were lines on our dock, and to tell him that we expected to make it home by 11 a.m. A little while later we made the turn into our home waters of Barnegat Bay. We were very nostalgic about this amazing adventure that we were completing, and then we talked about all the enjoyable things we could do this summer with our boat in our local area.

It now became quite over-cast in the western sky, but it looked like we would still beat any showers in. Finally, our own channel into Seawood Harbor was in sight, even though many of the markers were still down from the winter storms. Unfortunately, the condition of our inlet had gotten worse since we left, not only with a sand-bar building up and narrowing the channel, but also with shoaling continuing to make the depths tenuous.

George maneuvered “Reflection” in carefully and then blew her horn to announce our arrival in our lagoon. We were greeted by one of our neighbors who ran out of her house, waving and yelling, “Welcome Home!”, and Ernie, and his dog, Casper, who gave us his version of a warm “Hello” by running up and down our docks barking excitedly! At exactly 10:58 a.m. and after some 5,474 miles we crossed our wake and completed the “Loop” at our wonderful home where we started this trip on June 6, 2009!!! Later that evening we had an animated “Arrival Celebration” with a number of our neighbors, whom George called our “Support Crew”. We then made champagne toasts to each other and to “Reflection” as an acknowledgement of how truly grateful we are to God for not only blessing us with each other, our boat, and this exciting travel adventure, but also for the great people we met and the old friends we got to see along the way.

Here are a few of our trip statistics:

Miles traveled: 5,474
Days on-board: 324
Number of states visited: 16
Locks: 104
Gallons of fuel: 3,547
Number of towns/villages visited: 98
Great Lakes: Lake Ontario, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan
Length of stay in Canada (Ontario Province): 5 ½ weeks
Length of stay in Marathon, Florida: 5 months
Number of friends we’ve made: Too many to mention

This was definitely the trip of a life-time, or until we say: “Let’s do it again!”