Time of Their Lives
Bob and Sue Keehne had the boat, they’d soon have the time, but they weren’t entirely sure they had the skills or confidence to take on the Great Loop. They’d owned small sailboats over the years and had done some light cruising in their home waters of Lake Michigan, but a journey of more than 5,000 miles that would take them up and down unfamiliar rivers, through numerous locks and across exposed sections of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast would test them on many levels.
Their fears about all that changed, though, when they attended an event hosted by the America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association. Loopers presented several days of seminars on practical topics such as anchoring and navigation. The Keehnes went home confident they were up to the task.
“That was the turning point that convinced us,” Bob says.
A year and a half later, they cast off from their home port of Ludington, Michigan, on an adventure that would take them on a 5,642-mile counterclockwise circumnavigation of the eastern
