Great Loop Financial Backstories
People are excited for us when they hear we’ve purchased a boat. And then they hear it is in Wisconsin on Lake Superior, while we are in Washington state on the Puget Sound. A puzzled look comes across their face and we hear, “How are you going to get it here?”
How indeed? What are the plans? Great question!
Continue reading “Your Boat is WHERE?”The boat buying process seemed like a bit of a black box. We’ve hung out on the AGLCA forums for enough years to have a general idea, but didn’t really understand all the pieces. This blog post is to outline how the process went for us. Your mileage may vary.
Executive summary: We bought a boat! It has headroom. We paid cash. It is a long way away from home. Using a buyer’s broker is a good thing.
Now here’s the story…
Continue reading “A Giant Step”I’ve been mulling this post over in my head for a couple months now. In a previous post, I talked about how our buyer’s broker gave us some of the realities of the current boat buying market. I promised a separate post on that. Here it is.
A bonus with this post is a fun, useful, and on-point YouTube video by OnFireFamily a little further down the page.
There seem to be three industries that march hand-in-hand in the boat buying/selling world: boat insurance, boat financing and boat brokers. I think of them as a kind of triumvirate…or is it trinity?
Part two of our Florida trip contained our primary destination, the Introduction to Boat Systems class by Captains Chris and Alyse Caldwell in Vero Beach.
For those that are not familiar with their classes, Chris and Alyse have a two-day Cruising 101 FUNdamentals seminar, generally followed the next week by the Introduction to Boat Systems. The idea is that you can take one class, enjoy Florida for a few days, and then take the next.
Continue reading “Introduction to Boat Systems – Captains Chris and Alyse Caldwell”
Our looper planning trip to Florida exceeded our expectations. Highly exceeded our expectations.
As you may remember from an earlier post, our Florida road trip was to be focused on visiting Great Loop locations and attending the Boat Systems class by Chris and Alyse Caldwell. We planned to spend a couple days in Fort Myers, cross the state driving along the Okeechobee waterway, and end up in Vero Beach for the class. We hoped to maybe, hopefully walk a dock and catch a glimpse of a looper flag or two.
Well, that didn’t happen as planned!
Continue reading “Trying on boats for size – Fort Myers”
Planning is half the fun, they say. Based on how fun the planning half has been, the actual Loop itself should be a blast!
I’ve run across a couple great Great Loop planning blog posts lately that have really inspired me. These are people on the loop already, but who have taken the time to describe some of their planning. I need to reach out and see if the bloggers would like to add to my collection of planning stories here at greatloopfi.
Speaking of planning, we have been going a bit deeper in our planning lately.
Continue reading “Planning is fun, right?”
When I start reading a new Great Loop blog, I go right to the first post. The first ever post. The “this was our planning and how we were able to do the loop” post. Sometimes I have to scroll through years of archives to find it, but I go back to the beginning.
I’m always a bit disappointed when the first post is Day One of the trip.
Continue reading “Financial Backstories? What?”