Video Transcript

This video will cover our stats and expenses for the first 500 miles along the Great Loop Waterway. I want to mention that this information along with more interviews and other helpful info can be found on our website GreatLoopWaterway.com.

Welcome aboard Swamp Puppy, I’m Captain Tom and we just hit 500 miles on the Great Loop. Our 500 miles brought us from where we started the Great Loop in Sebastian, Florida to the Waccamaw River that we’re on right now which is just south of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. All right, on to the stats.

Today is our 15th cruise and our day 27 on the Loop so essentially we’ve cruised for about half of the days that we’ve been on the Loop. One of our personal goals along this 6,000 nautical mile journey is to anchor out as much as possible and, if we can, never stay at a marina. So far we’ve anchored out 25 nights at 14 different anchorages and we’ve stayed at a free dock for two nights, and it was just one free dock location.

In 86 hours of cruising total we traveled 515 nautical miles which brings our average to 5.8 nautical miles per hour. On average we travel 34 miles per day with our longest day being 58.5 miles and our shortest day being only 13 miles. On average we start cruising at 7:40 a.m and we stop cruising at 1:30 p.m. However, that’s not always the case.

We’ve started as early as 6:40 a.m or as late as 12:15 p.m. We’ve stopped cruising as early as 9:15 a.m or as late as 5:40 p.m. We personally prefer to start cruising earlier in the morning and to get done by mid-afternoon. It just doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes we’re waiting on the weather or most often we’re waiting on the tides.

We think that the sweet spot for a cruise day is around five to six hours total. However, we’ve had short days where we only did 2 hours and 15 minutes and also a long day where we did 9 hours.

They’re so close I didn’t even have them in full frame!

Now let’s dive into expenses. For maintenance and repairs we spent $93.42, groceries $629.78, fuel $1316.24, restaurants and snacks $431.77, recreation and education $103.50, marinas and dockage $26.16, laundry $39, household goods $67.31, toiletries $40.33, apps and software $96.47, insurance and safety $224.10, water $0, travel expenses $67.75 which brings the grand total to $3,135.83. If you’re looking for an itemized breakdown of this information join us on Patreon. So far we’ve only completed 515 nautical miles of the 6,000 nautical mile journey that is the Great Loop Waterway.

Using our expenses, we project that over 6,000 miles the total would be $36,533.94. Now this is a total projection obviously costs are going to vary month to month and each 500 mile section, but it’s kind of neat to just use this and project it out and if we did continue to spend this this is what we would spend total. Likewise, if we use how much we’ve paid for diesel so far and project that over the entire Loop we’re looking to spend around $15,335.

This area is beautiful! All the cypress trees are just absolutely gorgeous and it reminds me of my hometown, which is in Winter Haven. We used to have a theme park called Cypress Gardens that is now Legoland.

Passing under the bridge and entering the Waccamaw River I noticed cypress trees and a darkening of the water. I said to Elyse I thought those only grow in fresh water. She did a little digging and reported back that the Waccamaw River is mostly fresh!

It’s also known for its beautiful tannic waters. Now, in my humble opinion, these black waters and the cypress trees were some of the prettiest cruising grounds that we’ve seen yet. The cypress trees remind me of my hometown and the black waters remind me of fishing my favorite place – Lake Kissimmee.

As we wandered up the peaceful river we passed by a small marina, Wacca Wache. We noticed that they had cheap fuel and their diesel was $4.68 per gallon. I held the dock master on Channel 13 and he let me know pretty quickly that they prefer the term inexpensive but they had room in the fuel dock for us.

We topped off on fuel and water, and of course grabbed a soda, before continuing on.

We just topped off with fuel. We got 93 gallons at Wacca Wache. Their fuel was only $4.68 a gallon and I know that’s high but we have seen fuel in the $6 range pretty much all the time and even in the $7 range so we’re happy with $4.68. We got 93 gallons of fuel and had traveled 251 nautical miles since the last time we got fuel, at Two-way Fish Camp. This put our average at 2.7 nautical miles per gallon or 3 mpg overall.

Based on the engine’s manual I thought we were only going to get 2.2 miles per gallon so getting 3 miles per gallon was the best news of the day, especially given today’s fuel prices. Across 6,000 nautical miles that will save us around $4,000 – that’s a big difference!

We cruised another 4 miles to Bull Creek, around the oxbow and dropped the hook. We arrived early enough for me to drop Zed, our dinghy, and do a little fishing. After practicing casting a little while and coming up empty-handed, I picked up Elyse and took her for a troll along the bank. We saw an alligator a lot of turtles and a few osprey.

We admired the longleaf lily pads everywhere. What a perfect way to end a wonderful day.

Future Tom here! We’re almost 2,400 nautical miles in, currently sitting in the Georgian Bay in Ontario and we are still on our zero marina streak. That’s right, we’ve never been to a marina overnight and we’ve never even plugged into shore power. If you want to know how, well I think I’ve mentioned a few times – GreatLoopWaterway.com (solar component list). It’s our own personal website – I’m not trying to sell you anything just that’s where the information is at.

We’re filming every single cruise day along the Great Loop and we’re turning each one of them into a video. We’re also keeping track of our stats and expenses so if you’re looking for more information like that don’t forget to subscribe. Do us a favor like, comment, hype, share it with your friends, let everybody know about it, and thanks for watching.

We’ll catch you next time.